


weightless

by johnsonzzzyc



Category: NINE PERCENT (Band), 偶像练习生 | Idol Producer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Anorexia, M/M, and fluff bc i’m soft, does this count as a slow burn, first fic lmao spare me, yanjun is self-destructive and temperamental
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-04-22 20:51:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 26,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14316921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/johnsonzzzyc/pseuds/johnsonzzzyc
Summary: Lin Yanjun was selfish and cold. He did not care for much except himself and his rap, and he definitely did not care for chubby boys that trampled on his feet in the middle of dance practice.You Zhangjing was dramatic and loud. He made easy friends with almost anyone, except for narcissistic, judgmental, disrespectful, incorrigible, condescending -Well, except for Lin Yanjun.





	1. Chapter 1

When they first met, You Zhangjing was just a singer and Lin Yanjun was just a pretty boy with a deep voice. They were blossoming (or at least trying to be) trainees in the peak of fall, and they definitely did not get along.

“Haven’t you been training for months now? I would think Chaoze would’ve taught you something about coordination. My feet are going to explode if you stomp on them one more time.” Lin Yanjun was selfish and cold. He did not care for much except himself and his rap, and he definitely did not care for chubby boys that trampled on his feet in the middle of dance practice.

“Maybe if you didn’t spend so much time looking at yourself in the mirror you could prepare yourself next time. And I’d be doing you a favor if I broke your feet; maybe it’ll bring your ego back to Earth.” You Zhangjing was dramatic and loud. He made easy friends with almost anyone, except for narcissistic, judgmental, disrespectful, incorrigible, condescending - 

Well, except for Lin Yanjun.

It got to the point that Chaoze, their lead dancer and choreographer, had to keep them in separate training rooms so their bickering wouldn’t burden the other trainees’ practicing. Winter and spring passed as they trained on separate sides of the same building, ate on opposite sides of the same table, and walked down the different hallways that reflected their different paths. They integrated into the trainee group at Banana Culture Ent. without the presence of each other, but that is how they flourished. 

Yanjun’s training was soon brought to a hiatus when he was called back home to Taiwan in order to be with a sick family member. He packed his bags and left, leaving the other trainees to their own development as the blossoming boy accepted his year-long stagnancy.

\---

Thirteen months later, he came back to a celebrating practice room with banners reading “Yanjun isn’t dead!” and “Now you can fix your awful pitch!” strung along the mirrored wall. Yanjun couldn’t help but smile - he had missed the tinge of sweat always hanging in the air of the practice room, the feel of hardwood, flexible but durable, beneath his feet, the desperate but determined aura seeping from the corners, and, of course, his idiotic colleagues. Dinghao and Chaoze flanked him on both sides, recklessly dropping the bags Yanjun had forced them to carry from the car downstairs.

“Who takes five bags worth of clothes back home? Aren’t trainees supposed to be poor? Were you there for your sick grandmother or for fashion?” Chaoze muttered, repeatedly kicking the suitcase he had just dropped with each question. Ignoring his obnoxious tanned friend, Yanjun took some time to look around. It was almost comical how much nothing had changed – Honglin, Ruotian, Maotong, and the others all looked the same in the same old room he had been in every day the previous year. The only person he didn’t recognize, he noticed with confusion, was some short guy at the snacks table.

“Yo, Dinghao, who’s that new guy in the corner? The one with his back turned.” Yanjun asked with furrowed eyebrows. He thought Banana was done recruiting for a while, so why had they gotten someone new?

Dinghao, on top of being naturally optimistic and upbeat, was a troll. He also hated carrying loads of bags upstairs and had always gotten into fights with Yanjun anyway, so when he was handed such a beautiful opportunity to mess with the newly returned trainee, he seized it with open arms and a snicker.

“You remember You Zhangjing? That’s his younger brother. Go say hi! I’ve heard he’s actually kind of shy, but he’s cute.” Yanjun raised his eyebrows in surprise. Two You brothers in the same building? He couldn’t even tolerate one. Ah, but Zhangjing would surely be pissed if his younger brother befriended the person he hated the most, so why not?

Yanjun sauntered over with his trademark confidence and tapped the shoulder of the brother’s back, smiling and even sending a wink as the stranger turned around. “Wow, you really do look like Zhangjing,” he said, leaning closer and giving the boy a once-over. He was short and small, wearing oversized practice clothes that hung off his frame and giving Yanjun the most bewildered look ever – because a random stranger just came up to him, no doubt. But the dark eyes and wavy brown hair were the same. Him and Zhangjing almost could’ve been twins if it weren’t for their difference in stature, Yanjun noted. He laughed. “I see that you’re skinnier than Zhangjing, though. I’m sure you’re probably the better dancer.”

The comment completely changed the boy’s demeanor. He straightened up from his previously surprised posture and charged past Yanjun and out the door of the room without a word. Yanjun just stared, appalled. Did he say something wrong? Shoot, were they those really close siblings? He looked over at Dinghao for an explanation, and saw the boy getting punched by Chaoze on the other side of the room.

“You’re so childishly stupid, you dummy. I’m making you do extra push-ups before practice tomorrow, you incompetent weakling,” he heard Chaoze scold from across the room. Dinghao paled at the threat and started whining profusely, begging Chaoze to rescind such a comment.

“What was that about?” Yanjun asked as he walked over, completely ignoring their mundane actions; they were still the same pair as before.

“Dinghao’s an insensitive loser who needs to learn a lesson. And you are too, Lin Yanjun! That was You Zhangjing, so you better go catch him and apologize before I welcome you back with Lin Chaoze’s Training Regiment from Hell,” he nagged, sending daggers at Yanjun before returning to his campaign of punches on Dinghao’s left arm.

Disregarding Chaoze’s remark - he would deal with it later - Yanjun set off, jogging out of the room and into the hallway outside. He could see Zhangjing’s retreating back, and the reminder that that was the boy he had met before set his blood boiling.

“Ya, Zhangjing!” he yelled as he walked down the hall. He knew he had been heard, but the boy in question continued without a flinch. “I hope you don’t think losing all that weight is going to help with your career!” This time, Zhangjing stopped but didn’t turn around. “It really pisses me off when people think that physical looks are all that matter in this industry. You’re stupid if you wasted this entire last year working on that instead of practicing your dancing or singing. That’s just sad. I hate people like you.”

By now, Yanjun had reached Zhangjing, and he grabbed his shoulder to force him around. Now they were face to face, only several inches part. Yanjun was breathing heavily from yelling and catching up to Zhangjing, who was blank-faced but, for some reason, was also breathing hard. Yanjun’s eyebrows furrowed as he took in Zhangjing’s appearance, dropping his hand from the boy’s shoulder. There seemed to be something underlying in the movement of his chest with every heave. Was the glistening in his eyes from tears or was it due to something else? He looked so pitiful that even Yanjun, for a second, wanted to take back his tirade. Zhangjing’s mouth parted and it almost seemed like he was on the verge of telling Yanjun something, like there was something lying deep inside that he wanted to -

“Have you apologized yet, Lin Yanjun?!” A high-pitched voice rang through the hallway, and Yanjun rolled his eyes as he turned around to face Dinghao.

“You’re a loser, you know that right?” Yanjun saw Dinghao’s eyes narrow at something past Yanjun. 

Dinghao sighed. “I guess that’s a no. Chaoze’s gonna come for your neck in practice tomorrow. That’s too bad. I worked so hard on that ‘Yanjun isn’t dead!’ poster,” he said, shaking his head in disappointment and returning to the party. Yanjun turned around, only to notice that Zhangjing was out of sight.

\---

Chaoze wasn’t joking when he threatened Yanjun with his Training Regiment from Hell the day before. Five times the normal set of push-ups, sit ups, planks, and lunges later, Yanjun was practically passed out in the corner of the practice room. After a year’s worth of almost no physical exercise, he wondered if he would have to spend the rest of his days dragging himself with his hands to move around - after suing Lin Chaoze, of course.

“Not so fast, weakling. You need to learn the choreography too. The first shooting is soon.” The trainees from Banana Ent. were soon entering a new survival show called Idol Producer and Yanjun was late on learning the company’s evaluation piece because of his training hiatus. He directed a face of disgust towards the source of the nasally voice, slumping against the mirror and kneading his thighs. Despite his desire to retort, Yanjun knew his boundaries, and that sarcasm against Chaoze in choreographer mode would result in instant fatality. He opted to cry out dramatically, doubling over on his knees in a begging motion.

“Please, almighty god of all that is dance and choreography, give me a break.” Chaoze rolled his eyes, but he was a gracious king that responded to flattery. 

“You can watch us practice what we’ve prepared, but after that I expect 110% from you,” he replied before leaving to join the group’s formation. Yanjun nodded in agreement, even though he probably only had 40% left to give, and straightened up to watch the group. 

They planned on performing “Let the World Be Destroyed,” if he remembered correctly, with a dance break at the end. He watched, impressed - all of his members might have looked exactly the same (except for Zhangjing, he thought bitterly), but they had improved significantly. Chaoze must have either really cracked down this past year, or this Idol Producer show must have lifted everyone’s spirits, Yanjun thought. Everyone’s dancing was in sync, as it always is if Chaoze has something to say about it, and their movements sharp and definite. Even their singing seemed to have become more stable and confident. Wow, is this what he had missed while he was gone? Yanjun ran a hand sheepishly through his hair and stared at his shoes. He didn’t realize he would get so behind, especially right before a survival show. Did he even have the skills to compete anymore? He would have to -

A clear high note echoed throughout the practice room. Yanjun looked up immediately with wide eyes, searching for the source. No one at Banana Ent. had such a beautiful voice and there was no way someone could have improved that much. His eyes finally settled on a small boy on the left side of the formation, standing separately from the others and clutching the microphone tightly, his eyes squeezed shut in concentration. The note had come from the trainee Yanjun had forgotten out of habit - after doing it so frequently a year earlier - the small boy he had overlooked because he had blended in so well with the others. You Zhangjing?

Yanjun watched with wide eyes as Zhangjing executed yet another high note, even higher and more angelic than before. He realized then that he’d never even heard Zhangjing sing before. The others continued dancing as if was a normal occurrence, and it made Yanjun wonder if it was.

Now that he had noticed Zhangjing, he couldn’t keep his eyes off him. He stared as the dance break started - and there he was, near the front of the formation, dancing with more energy and effort than everyone else (except for Chaoze, but he doesn’t count). Had he always been this good? He was definitely several levels higher than Yanjun when it came to dancing and an entire world above him in singing, and that made Yanjun sick to his stomach.

As the song ended and everyone drifted off to collect their breathing and rehydrate, Yanjun grabbed Honglin’s arm and pulled him down to his level.

“Honglin, can I ask you about Zhangjing?” he asked, and he couldn’t help how rushed the question sounded. Bei Honglin, who was as perceptive as he was good with people, laughed good-naturedly.

“If you’re asking about his high notes, he’s always sung like that. I mean, he improved a little bit with stability, but that guy was truly born to sing. If you’re referring to his dancing, yeah, he’s improved. But he’s always been a hard worker so it’s not a surprise.” Yanjun grimaced, partially because Honglin had read straight through the question like he always did but also because of the contents of his answer.

“Well, I feel like an asshole,” he muttered, glancing at You Zhangjing, who seemed to be practicing his pitch as if he hadn’t just sung the most beautiful note Yanjun had ever heard. Honglin followed Yanjun’s gaze.

“I know you guys don’t get along, but you really don’t even know him. Plus, I heard about what happened yesterday because Dinghao’s such a gossiping queen. And, not to be that person, but you were kind of - well, you were really out of line, Yanjun-ge,” he said, patting Yanjun’s shoulder and leaving to stretch.

Yanjun sighed, leaning his head back against the mirror and closing his eyes. He really must have messed up if Honglin had to tell him that, but he had too much pride to apologize and, honestly, might have been a little too ashamed to even try.

His eyes opened as he heard Chaoze clap and call for everyone’s attention. 

“Ready for round two, losers?” Everyone groaned and prepared to get into position. Yanjun stood up and started to stretch reluctantly; he was definitely going to sue Chaoze for making him a cripple. “Oh, that won’t be necessary, Yanjun.” Yanjun raised an eyebrow at Chaoze, who was smiling smugly. 

“I thought your ‘regiment’ wasn’t done for the day,” Yanjun said, making quotation marks with his fingers. He swore he saw Chaoze suppress a giggle. What the hell?

“Oh, it’s not,” Chaoze replied, even more smugness evident in his voice. Did he sneak a glance at Zhangjing, who was casually stretching out his shoulders with the others, or was Yanjun seeing things? “As the final component of my Training Regiment from Hell,” he announced loudly, acquiring the attention of everyone in the room, “you and Zhangjing will make out.”

“WHAT?!” Yanjun and Zhangjing shouted simultaneously. The entire group of trainees erupted in chaos - except for Dinghao, who was... clapping?

“Oh, sorry, sorry,” Chaoze said quickly, clearing his throat. “Excuse me, I meant make up.”


	2. Chapter 2

Yanjun banged his fist against the door of the practice room - the _locked_ door of the practice room. “Lin Chaoze, just wait until I get my hands on you!” He heard a self-satisfied laugh from the other side of the barrier.

“Toodles! You two have fun now! We’re going to go get some HaiDiLao,” Chaoze replied, and Yanjun could practically see the little shit twiddling his fingers. Yanjun slid to his knees, head down and palms flat against the wood. He was defeated.

“Can you please just bring leftovers?” he asked meekly.

“Duh!” Hope rose from the bottom of Yanjun’s heart like a beacon of light for sailors on a stormy midnight, dragging him out of darkness. His mouth watered with the memory of savory hotpot, and he lifted his head with words of gratitude on the tip of his tongue. “But, you never know. Us poor trainees are starved and we need nourishment for growth after our endless, difficult, _grueling, back-breaking hours_ of practice, hoping, praying, _striving_ for just an ounce of success... So, the longer you take, the smaller the chance there will be some left!” 

He heard the sound of seven trainees walking away, chatting amongst themselves and, the loudest among them, Dinghao chanting “HAI. DI. LAO. I. LOVE. YOU.” Yanjun sighed, turning around and leaning his back against the cursed door that separated him from freedom and hotpot. He was alone - well, alone plus You Zhangjing. There _he_ was, sitting a couple of meters away and fiddling with the strings of his hoodie. He hadn’t said anything since Chaoze had first locked them in and explained that they wouldn’t be let out until they officially made up. Yanjun, to say the least, was pissed. This one boy had given him more trouble in the last two days than he’d ever had since joining the company two years ago. He wished that they had just continued staying on opposite sides of the same room, that they had never ended up in the same hallway, that Yanjun had never heard him sing.

Thirty-five minutes passed, their silence only broken by the gentle whirring of the air conditioner above them. Yanjun was massaging his recovering calves and Zhangjing had redirected his attention to the laces on his sneakers. The former couldn’t help but fuel his contempt by frequently glancing at the other, who was surprisingly good at avoiding contact and further catalyzing Yanjun’s temper in doing so.

“Are you going to do anything or are you just going to stare at your shoes the entire night?” The silence was making Yanjun itchy; he was used to yelling out his problems, fighting until there was a definite winner. There was no winner in silence.

“What’s the point in talking?” came the muted reply. Yanjun’s eyes shot to Zhangjing, who was looking at him with indifference. “We’re just going to wait it out until someone comes back to check on us, and they’ll have to believe us if we tell them we made up since they weren’t here.” Zhangjing finally broke their eye contact with a shrug and ran his eyes along the walls enclosing them. “And even if they don’t believe us, they’re going to need to open the practice room tomorrow morning anyway. The girls are taking up the other big one and we have a show coming up.”

Yanjun was shocked. How could he be so apathetic about the whole situation? Did he not even want to try to make up? At the same time, did _Yanjun_ even want to try?

“Uh-h, wh-hat about the hotpot?” he stammered lamely. Yanjun wanted to hit himself in the face with a steel bat for choosing probably the most inappropriate response for the situation. Oh no, he might have even just worsened his chances at HaiDiLao if Zhangjing took that the wrong way. “Shit, I don’t mean it like that. I mean, I don’t mean it like anything. It’s just that _I_ really want hotpot - ‘cause I’m really fucking starved and practice today was awful - so there’s also probably a chance that _you_ want hotpot too, you know?”

Yanjun let out a deep breath of relief when he saw what he could have sworn was the ghost of a smile flit across Zhangjing’s face. But, he noted with a tiny bit of what felt like concern, why did the almost-smile look so sad? 

_God, I must be getting soft,_ he thought as he scooted over to close the distance between them. Maybe he was just really hungry or maybe he just really hated whatever they were to each other. Zhangjing looked at him with raised eyebrows as they sat face to face. Yanjun set him the friendliest, cheekiest smile he could muster as he thrust his right hand out in greeting.

“We barely know each other, and I’m sure what we do know about each other is probably all due to miscommunication.” He ruffled his hair with his left hand, timidly glancing to the side in what must have been embarrassment before re-establishing eye contact with the small boy in front of him. “Or, at least, that’s what Honglin said, and he’s always right anyway. So, yeah. I’m Yanjun. I’m a rapper, kind of trying to be a singer.”

It must have only been seven seconds - though it felt more like seven minutes to Yanjun, who had never surrendered in a fight in this way before and felt what might have been panic at the thought that he was about to be rejected. 

Finally, he heard a laugh and felt the warmth of another hand against his palm. Zhangjing was looking at him and Yanjun almost wanted to feel what could have been affection at how Zhangjing’s top lip sharply curved in to show off all of his bunny teeth when he smiled. It made him wonder if they had ever seen each other smile before.

“I’m Zhangjing. I’m a singer, definitely not trying to be a rapper,” he said, still smiling crookedly. “You know, you look a little scary when you smile like that.” The comment wiped the smile off of Yanjun’s face.

“Wh-what?” Yanjun stammered. He had always been complimented for his smile, if not at least his dimples. Yanjun heard a cackling laugh and felt the contact of hands against his arm as Zhangjing fell forward in hysterics.

“You looked so shocked, I’m going to cry,” Zhangjing forced out between laughs. “You’re just like this cold, serial-killer guy. It doesn’t match the friendly concept at all.”

“Well, _excuse me_ for trying to be the friendly one. I didn’t see you offering the golden hand of peace,” Yanjun retorted sarcastically, but he was smiling as he said it. They were both looking at each other and they were both smiling and that must have been when the wilting boys started to blossom again.

“Sorry for being a jerk about the whole situation earlier. I honestly didn’t think you wanted to make up,” Zhangjing said, smiling softly. Yanjun punched him lightly on the arm, and Zhangjing dramatically cried out and clutched his arm in response.

“Loser.” Yanjun chuckled at the melodrama. So this must have been what the others meant about Zhangjing rivaling even Chaoze in the drama queen department. “Seriously, though, I’m the only one at fault. I started all of this and wasn’t mature enough to stop it.”

Zhangjing shrugged. “I practically encouraged it. It’s not a one-sided thing, so don’t come out here all holier-than-thou just because you extended a hand first.” Zhangjing lightly shoved Yanjun, who smirked in amusement. “I’m glad you did, though. I hate not getting along with people, honestly.”

Yanjun nodded and they fell into what must have been a comfortable silence, the remnants of the jokes they had just shared floating lightly in the air between them. It wasn’t perfect, and it probably would never be. There were two years of nothing between them before that moment and yet they were hard to forget. But what they were now had to be a lot more than nothing, and it made _something_ blossom inside Yanjun to think that they were starting to be _almost-something._

“Well, what now? Knowing Chaoze, he was probably lying about checking up on us after they come back,” Zhangjing said, shifting to lie on his back and crossing his arms on top of his chest.

“Maybe we should bang on the door until someone is gracious enough to let us out. I’m literally starving, how about you?” Yanjun mimicked Zhangjing’s actions until they were both lying on their backs a foot away from each other, staring at the light fixtures on the ceiling looming above them. He saw Zhangjing’s shoulders move half-heartedly in a shrug from the corner of his eye.

“Nah, not hungry.” It made Yanjun think for a second. The group had had breakfast that morning, but practiced for nine hours straight afterward with only water breaks. He remembered seeing an apple core in Zhangjing’s hand that morning. Yanjun turned so that his body was facing Zhangjing, his body weight supported on his right arm, and felt that same _almost-something_ rise up inside of him.

“Do you want to play truth or dare?” Zhangjing glanced at him and raised his eyebrows. “It’d be a good way to pass the time and to correct any misconceptions, ya know? Plus, I love truth or dare,” Yanjun elaborated while poking Zhangjing’s cheek. “Come on.” 

“Gosh, who would have known Lin Yanjun would be so annoying?” he responded, shoving away the finger and sending a look of disgust at Yanjun, who was wiggling his eyebrows at him. Zhangjing sighed. “Fine, only to make you stop doing whatever that is. You go first.”

“Great. Truth or dare?” 

“Truth, I guess.”

“Where are you from? I can tell you have some kind of accent.”

“Malaysia. You really didn’t know that about me?”

“I don’t know a lot of things. That’s why we’re playing this. Hush, it’s your turn.”

The game progressed that way, the two learning a lot of little facts about each other. No one said dare and no one dared to say it, so they continued with lots of little truths. The questions and their answers were trivial - information like their birthdays, blood types, favorite colors - but it took a lot of little somethings to build up from two years of nothing. 

Zhangjing continued to lay on his back and stare at the ceiling. He liked how, instead of several large lights, the company had set up many small lights to illuminate the room. It felt like he was looking at his own private sky with his own private stars. Yanjun continued to lie on his side, facing Zhangjing. He had been looking at the other watch the ceiling throughout the game, looking at how his practice clothes threatened to swallow him whole, looking at how his collarbone peeked through the misaligned collar of his shirt, looking at how his ribs seemed like they wanted to escape with every rise of his chest. He thought about the boy he had met two years ago, the boy he was looking at now, and the transition from nothing to almost-something to the something he wasn’t sure of.

“Yanjun, it’s your turn,” Zhangjing said, turning to face Yanjun. “Are you tired of the game already?” Yanjun met eyes with the boy in front of him. He forgot to ask "truth or dare?" but did it matter if he knew what the response was going to be?

“Why did you lose so much weight?”

Zhangjing’s eyes slid to the side, breaking their eye contact. His eyes roamed along the walls, like his answer was written carefully on the plaster. There was a silence, and then - 

“It was just like you said yesterday. I wanted to increase my chances of debuting and being liked. Sorry for being the person you hate because of that.” There was nothing in his voice and that must have meant something.

“Don’t lie to me,” Yanjun said sharply, causing Zhangjing’s eyes to dart back to his. “You wouldn’t do something like that.” He could have sworn that same glistening from the day before was returning.

“You don’t _know me_ ,” Zhangjing insisted, but his words were empty. Was it due to tears or something else?

“You wouldn’t do something like that,” Yanjun repeated. Zhangjing looked like he was about to drown in his own eyes and Yanjun didn’t know how to pull him out when he was right in front of him.

“You don’t understand.” The small lights overhead reflected in the glistening and Yanjun saw both his own private ocean and his own private sky in the boy in front of him. Yanjun shook his head.

“I won’t be able to understand anything if you don’t open yourself up, You Zhangjing.” It must have been the first time he had said his full name and that must have meant something.

Zhangjing sat up and crossed his legs, fiddling with his shoelaces absentmindedly once more. There was another silence.

“I just couldn’t deal with it anymore.” 

The words were so soft they were almost nothing, but they meant everything to the both of them. It was possible that Yanjun wouldn’t have heard them if he wasn’t waiting for them; it was even possible that Yanjun had made them up, drew them out and pulled them from the heavy silence that had been sitting between them just so he wouldn’t hear nothing anymore. He waited for more, listening so closely that he realized how loud nothing was and how much he hated nothing and how whatever it was between them could not be nothing if he wanted them to be something so badly.

“Deal with what?” Yanjun wanted to ask, but he hated himself for not being able to say anything to the broken boy in front of him. Words had left him, everything he wanted to say but couldn’t sucked into the air between them, filling the silence but amplifying its loudness at the same time.

Zhangjing must have felt the weight of the unspoken words, must have felt Yanjun’s “deal with what?” sitting on the hardwood that separated them, because he answered.

“Myself. Every time I came in here and had to look at the mirror. Every time we went out to eat and everyone ate so happily and I wanted to regret what I enjoyed. It wasn’t even a matter of what everyone said about me, it was what I couldn’t say to myself.” Yanjun had never felt words so weighted but empty at the same time. They were like what _they_ were: not anything but something at the same time, on the brink of nothing but with a hint of what had to be everything. Yanjun wanted to do something, wanted to take the nothing out of Zhangjing and give him everything in its place, wanted to feel what he was feeling but didn’t want him to feel anything like that at all.

“So you didn’t eat?” Yanjun asked, for he didn’t have any other words left to give.

“I _couldn’t_.” Zhangjing tripped on the words and it made Yanjun want to disappear, to be nothing, to dissipate into everything that filled the space between them. “I tried, I really did. But. Like, I don’t know how to explain it. I couldn’t eat. God, I felt so helpless but so in control at the same time. Every time I was empty, Yanjun, I felt so weightless.” He choked on a laugh. “Almost like I could just fly. I wasn’t happy but I definitely didn’t feel sad like I did before. It was like... just being nothing, and I kind of liked it, you know?” Zhangjing turned to Yanjun with the same almost-sad smile he had seen yesterday, and Yanjun realized it wasn’t what he thought it was. It wasn’t almost sad, it wasn’t almost happy, it was a nothing smile and he hated it.

“Weightless birds don’t have the strength to fly,” Yanjun said softly, sitting up so that they were eye-level. He didn’t respond with anything else because he couldn’t - there was nothing else to say to the boy that had been through it all.

The ocean in Zhangjing’s eyes overflowed and a tsunami ran down his face. His shoulders shook with the sobs that wouldn’t escape.

“I’m trying,” he whispered. 

Yanjun moved forward, grabbing Zhangjing and pulling him into his arms. He felt how his bones were like broken wings poking out from under his t-shirt, how his hair sat like wilted leaves underneath his hand as he moved his head into the crevice between his neck and shoulder. He felt a downpour on his back and the shaking of his body against his chest and thought he must be holding a thunderstorm in his arms.

There were no words to say and no words to be said. Yanjun wasn’t able to take the nothing out of Zhangjing and give him everything in return, nor was he able to squeeze the wilting boy into bloom. But he was there and he was holding him and that seemed like enough.


	3. Chapter 3

Zhangjing wanted to regret the night before. He was quite the open book and it was hard for him to hold back any emotion - namely disgust - to be honest, but his eating disorder was the last thing he wanted to share.

Especially to... Lin Yanjun? How that even happened, he wasn’t sure. The year before they were... well, they weren’t even enemies. They weren’t really anything. But last night, they were surely something. He just couldn’t help it; Yanjun had quite the stare and Zhangjing had felt the pressure and it must have been that the words had been bottled up for too long anyway.

Zhangjing had never actually said the words to a person before. He knew Bei Honglin knew because that man was one of the most perceptive men alive and had slid him a snack with _that_ knowing look numerous times before, and he knew that Dinghao and Chaoze must have sensed something because they were always around him and had made slights at Zhangjing’s newly developed eating habits, but this was completely different.

This was Lin Yanjun - arrogant, condescending, temperamental Lin Yanjun. _But, is he really?_ Zhangjing thought, staring at the apple core in his hand as he walked towards the cafeteria. This preconceived notion about Yanjun could not have been for the same man from last night - the one who had extended the hand of friendship first, the one who had expressed interest in getting to know each other, the one who had held him when he’d cried.

_Oh, God._ Zhangjing couldn’t believe himself. He had turned into some desperate maiden in distress over the span of just a couple of hours. All because of Lin Yanjun. How was he supposed to act around him now? Zhangjing supposed it was probably best that he acted like nothing had happened. They were on good terms and that was all Chaoze and the others had expected anyway. What more could change after two years of nothing?

Zhangjing begrudgingly entered the cafeteria room. It was a matter of courtesy to sit with the guys in the morning, even though he had stopped eating in there months ago. It didn’t put him in much of a good mood to sit around a bunch of skinny boys with high metabolism and watch them scarf down a big breakfast, but he pushed down his despondency - and the slight amount of envy - to hang around his friends before hours of work. 

It was also a matter of courtesy (that eventually integrated into habit) to bring an apple core to keep him company at the table. He had learned it the hard way that there would be too much verbal bombardment and social pressure if he sat empty-handed, so, lo-and-behold, an apple core lent itself to become his armor. Zhangjing wanted to wish he could accept the food he was offered, wanted to wish he could eat happily without regret, but it had been too long since the last time he had wished so. He had fallen into a state of acceptance and had fallen too prone to habit, as if not eating was as mundane as carrying an apple core.

There was one spot left when he arrived at the table - Zhangjing would have been earlier if he hadn’t spent an extra 30 minutes in bed reassessing the night before and slapping his forehead every time he had done something stupid, starting with shaking Yanjun’s hand and ending with crying in his arms (how the two events were less than an hour apart, he had no idea). Almost immediately, he was confronted with a plate filled with rice and meat sliding towards him, and the words “I’m full” fell from his mouth like leaves in autumn.

Unlike usual, the plate that should have retreated at his words did not, and that was the first instance in which Zhangjing’s habits were denied. The second was when his apple core, its flesh exposed in all of its protective glory, was plucked out of his hand and tossed away as though it were empty - which it was, but it had still kept Zhangjing’s hands full and that was enough.

“I don’t care. You’re still going to eat this,” said the deep voice that accompanied the theft of his armor, and Zhangjing looked up to make eye contact with none other than Lin Yanjun, who was sitting to his right.

“I can’t take your food. You need to eat something.” Zhangjing tried to push the plate back towards the owner, who stopped its motion with a hand. There was a certain challenging look in Yanjun’s eye that Zhangjing didn’t like, and it caused him to break their eye contact first. He hated how Yanjun could look at him as if he was analyzing his every movement, as if he knew everything about him even though their first real conversation had been less than 24 hours ago, as if he could suddenly come back from Taiwan and disrupt everything Zhangjing had worked so long to establish.

“This isn’t my food. It’s yours.” Zhangjing hated the challenge in his voice that matched the one in his eyes, and he hated Yanjun for not acting as if nothing had happened between them like Zhangjing had decided earlier. He looked around to see if anyone was watching and noticed them all in their own conversation as if nothing was happening, and he wondered why such a normal conversation felt like everything to him. 

He looked back at an expectant Yanjun and then snuck a glimpse at the plate that had been placed before him. The portion of rice and meat was smaller than the helpings on everyone else’s plates and it made him think about what Yanjun had just said: ‘This isn’t my food. It’s yours.’ Had he really...?

For the first time in months, You Zhangjing ate in the cafeteria. Not for himself and definitely not out of habit, but for Lin Yanjun. He did it like a baby takes his first steps and like an adult attempts to type out on keys a melody he learned as a child, unsure about his own physical capability but with an objective in mind. It made him feel sick and uncomfortable, and he didn’t know how to feel about not being empty - though he _did_ know that he wanted to slap the self-satisfied smile off of Yanjun’s face.

\---

Zhangjing wanted to regret that morning. He hated eating and he hated feeling full and, most of all, he hated Lin Yanjun. He hated Lin Yanjun for making him eat and for making him feel full and, most of all, for making him feel _so much_ in such a small amount of time.

Practice had been hell. The reality of breakfast had hit him thirty minutes in and Zhangjing had to dance against what felt like 50 pounds of physical and emotional baggage. 

He had eaten. He had eaten. He had _eaten._

He had wanted to throw up, not necessarily to get rid of the food in his stomach but because he didn’t know how else to respond to the weight that threatened to crush his chest. He had been so stupid, so naive to think that it was just that easy. He thought back on each individual bite and felt sick each and every time he remembered that bite disappearing.

Chaoze realized - partially due to Honglin’s input - that something was wrong and sent Zhangjing back to his room two hours early. Zhangjing wanted to refuse and stay for any chance of working off all the calories he must have digested, but was too tired to argue against all that weighed him down. He left and was accompanied by the additional weight of a certain pair of eyes on his back.

Two hours later and Zhangjing’s sole accomplishment was successfully ingraining the image of his ceiling onto his brain after staring at it for too long. He had thought of getting up and visiting the treadmill a countless number of times, but didn’t know why he couldn’t despite his intense desire to. He didn’t know why he couldn’t do anything, actually. All he could do was think aimlessly but even that was weighing him down even more. He felt like he was going to drop through the top bunk he was lying on, through the bottom bunk, through the floor, through the ground, through whatever came afterwards.

He thought about Dinghao pulling him to the side on the way to the practice room and telling him about how Yanjun had asked everyone when Zhangjing usually came to the cafeteria and how he was the first one there that morning just in case and how he had already eaten and ignored everyone making fun of him when he got another plate. He thought about how Yanjun had told everyone to ignore his conversation with Zhangjing just in case Zhangjing got embarrassed by the attention. He thought about how, when everyone asked about Yanjun’s intentions, he didn’t reveal any of Zhangjing’s secrets or feelings, nothing from the night before. He had just shrugged and said he had promised him a plate.

A soft knock sounded and, before Zhangjing could even think about how he was too heavy to move, was accompanied by an even softer “Hey, Zhangjing.” Zhangjing was not sure how something so small and so soft could compel him to make his first movement after two hours of mental hesitation. Nonetheless, he was compelled, and, ten seconds later, he was face to face with Yanjun. Well, not necessarily, as Zhangjing was having quite the staring competition with the top of his shoes.

“Yanjun.” Why was he being so awkward?

“Zhangjing.” Why was _he_ being so awkward?

The silence threatened to reach fifteen seconds and Zhangjing, out of curiosity and what was probably a hint of self-destructive tendencies, forced himself to look up.

He wished he hadn’t.

Lin Yanjun looked like a lot of things - a fuckboy, a serial killer, the devil reincarnated. A lost puppy was not of those things. But, there he was, standing with his hands in his pockets and looking at him, apology written in the creases in his forehead and around his mouth.

“What’s wrong?” Zhangjing hated that all of the anger and self-deprecation that had been building up inside of him was extinguished at the rising concern for the boy in front of him. He hated that, despite himself, he opened up the door a little more as an invitation for Yanjun to come inside. He hated that Yanjun accepted the invitation.

“I’m sorry. I’m so stupid, wow. Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Yanjun said quickly, patting down the front of his hair in embarrassment. “I just... I just wanted to help.” The two walked in and sat together on the bottom bunk as casually as snowflakes fall in winter. Zhangjing hated that he felt so close to someone he barely knew.

“I’m okay.” Zhangjing really wasn’t okay, but he didn’t know why he wanted to compromise his feelings in attempt to comfort the source of all of his troubles. He couldn’t deny it - there was definitely something between them. It was that same something from last night, the one that grew into all the corners of the practice room and filled the space between them until there was no space between them. And, here it was again, and Zhangjing didn’t know how to feel about the fact that the heavy emptiness that had been festering in the room was disappearing in the presence of this something.

“You’re not and it’s my fault.” Zhangjing didn’t know if he wanted to punch or hug him for reading through him like that. “I shouldn’t have pressured you.”

Zhangjing shrugged and they fell into a silence. He took the opportunity to look at everything that he was familiar with, not the someone-that-was-something? sitting a foot away from him. The beige walls, the _horrid_ zebra drapes that Chaoze hung up as an “ironic fashion statement,” the posters of dancing and singing idols he and Chaoze prayed to every morning (mostly as a joke but also as a reminder to work hard, of course), the desk overflowing with papers to study for exams Zhangjing would surely eventually fail, the ceiling he had spent two hours memorizing. 

And then, because he somehow couldn’t help himself, he took a glance at what was completely unfamiliar to him. The foreign object in question was leaned over, elbows propped up on his knees with his head resting on a fist. Zhangjing looked at Yanjun’s matted down hair, jet black and still slightly tinged with sweat from practice. He followed the line of his side profile, taking in his gently closed eyes and his mouth that was stretched just a little with tension - was it due to frustration or something else? He wondered how someone could look so tense but serene at the same time, like he was in the eye of a hurricane - or like he _was_ the eye in a hurricane.

He concluded that Lin Yanjun was handsome. It was obvious, of course - the entire human race quite possibly acknowledged that fact - but there was something distinct about Zhangjing’s conclusion. He thought the other’s handsomeness must stem from how he spoke - knowingly but with humility all the same - how he pierced through others with a gaze that could hurt but heal at the same time, how he carried himself egotistically but woke up extra early, ate quickly by himself, and grabbed another plate for someone he had just recently gotten acquainted with. Zhangjing quite seriously pondered the possibility of becoming closer with this handsome, complex young man.

As if he had heard the judgement, Yanjun looked up to meet Zhangjing’s eyes. Embarrassed and all-too-bad at hiding, well, _anything,_ Zhangjing coughed back a choke and averted his gaze to the Jolin Tsai poster across the room. He felt that gaze, casual but so damn calculating, linger on his face for what seemed just a tad too intimately long to be considered a moment before there was a shift in the mattress underneath him.

“C’mon,” he heard Yanjun say. Zhangjing looked over to see the aforementioned boy now on his feet, rubbing his hands on his joggers and stretching his arms above his head. His shirt rode up just a little too far and Zhangjing hated himself for hating the sliver of skin that was exposed. The shirt fell back down when Yanjun was done but Zhangjing could not remove his gaze, his thoughts on the meal that morning. He felt sick all over again.

“Where are we going?” he finally managed to ask, ripping his eyes away and looking at a smirking Yanjun.

“Outside. The weather’s nice today.” Yanjun was already at the exit, his hand on the doorknob. He turned around to see that Zhangjing hadn’t moved and sighed, dropping his hand and moving back towards the bed. “ _C’mon,_ you’re going to get sick from not moving.” Before he could grab Zhangjing’s hand to pull him off the bed, Zhangjing stood up so quickly he ran into Yanjun.

“Aiya, sorry,” Zhangjing said, grabbing Yanjun’s arm (he hated how firm it was) to stabilize himself. He had been too preoccupied with making sure Yanjun wouldn’t pull him up, too afraid that it would be succeeded by some joke about him being heavy and he definitely couldn’t have handled that in all of his current sensitivity. He felt Yanjun lean backward and felt the reverberations of his laugh with their close proximity. Zhangjing couldn’t help but smile; he didn’t realize how endearing the so-called “cold Yanjun” could be when he smiled so openly.

“Klutz,” he said gently, still chuckling. Zhangjing realized how fondly Yanjun was returning his gaze and how deep his dimples were when he laughed and thought he really didn’t mind the progression of whatever this was. He then noticed how close they were, his hand still gripping Yanjun’s arm and their chests only several inches apart. Something rose up inside him, filling his cheeks with a blush he wished he could contain; it was that same warm something, and it had fully replaced the two hours worth of heavy moping that had filled the room before. This something was much lighter, much more comfortable, and Zhangjing wondered why it felt so familiar when it had only been a day since he had first experienced it.

Zhangjing jokingly slapped Yanjun’s shoulder as a response and they walked out of the room and made their way outside. Zhangjing didn’t know what they were doing or what had spurred Yanjun’s invitation, but he kind of enjoyed the idea of spending time with Yanjun for some reason. This time yesterday, Yanjun had yelled him in this same hallway, but now here they were.

“What’re you thinking about?” Yanjun broke the silence as they opened the door to the outside, feeling the rush of a warm gust surround them. There were still remnants of summer’s heat hanging in the air, despite the nuance of red and orange that was overcoming the leaves little by little. The feeling of the atmosphere reminded Zhangjing of the something that had been filling his room. He wondered where the transition from summer to autumn had started and why he was so reminded of the person standing beside him when he saw a leaf, careful but purposeful, fall in front of his feet.

“You?” _Shit._

There was a laugh. “What about me?” Zhangjing stared at the leaf, red but with hints of green still leaking through the edges. He didn’t even know he had been thinking about it until the question slipped from his mouth.

“Why did you take the whole weight loss thing so seriously?”


	4. Chapter 4

“What was that?” Yanjun wasn’t sure if he’d heard Zhangjing correctly. They were outside – not for any reason except that Yanjun had invited the other out with him. Yanjun was quite sociable when he wanted to be, but he was an introvert at heart and looked forward to going on a run or just sitting outside alone at night. 

As for why he invited Zhangjing, the only person thus far to be readily invited to infringe upon his isolation, he had no idea. Maybe it was because he still felt bad about what happened that morning and couldn’t help the sympathy that gushed out of him when Zhangjing had opened his door not too long ago looking like he had spent the two hours he was given off lying in a pool of self-deprecation. Or maybe it was that he wanted another conversation, just one-on-one with Zhangjing, away from the commotion of the other trainees - just like the night before.

“Yesterday, y’know. You said that thing about hating people that think physical appearance is the most important thing in this industry.” They sat at a bench placed in the park near the entertainment building. Yanjun looked over at the boy sitting next to him and glanced at his hair, slightly curly as it sat on his head. He felt his hand threaten to twitch at the urge to pat it, to be reminded of how it felt to hold him the night before. He opted instead to pick up a wilted leaf sitting on the armrest of the bench, twirling it in front of his eyes. Green mixed with red mixed with yellow until it was a blur of nothing in front of him.

“When I auditioned for Rap of China,” he finally started, setting the leaf to the side, “I got a lot of criticism for my looks. Everyone doubted me, thinking that I was relying on my ‘pretty boy visuals’ to get into the industry. It happened again when I auditioned for Trainee18. I guess I was just a little sensitive when I’d seen you had… changed.”

“Oh.” Yanjun heard the response, soft and warm like the air that surrounded them, though not quite as heavy. “I never realized that would ever be a problem.” There was a laugh, laden with the disbelief of a scoff. “It seems I’ve literally experienced the exact opposite.”

“Gotta love double standards,” he said, stretching his arms above him and letting them rest on the back support of the bench. An arm disappeared behind Zhangjing. “Guess if you took the average of the two of us you’d get the perfect person.”

“Right. We’d get your visuals and my talent.” Yanjun leaned back with a loud laugh that rivaled drunk uncles in bars. He leaned towards Zhangjing until they were separated by only a few inches of hot air, smirking lazily.

“I have talent.” It was such a simple statement but it sounded like a challenge. The air grew denser than it already was with something that couldn’t be named. Yanjun could have sworn something changed in Zhangjing’s face.

“Like what?” A quirk of his eyebrow seemed more like a threat than just an acknowledgement. 

An arm slid against Zhangjing’s back as Yanjun stood up abruptly. He made an exaggerated demonstration of shaking out his hands and jumping on the balls of his feet to stretch. For the first time in front of another person, Yanjun showed the result of several weeks’ worth of practice: a one-handed roundoff. The air was buzzing with summer’s last heat before it fell back into autumn, but he heard the light applause anyway. He met eyes with Zhangjing, who was giving him such a bright smile he had to reciprocate it.

“I stand - well, sit - corrected. Seriously, though, that’s awesome.” Zhangjing gave him a high-five, and the gesture was so innocent it made something tighten in Yanjun’s heart as their hands touched briefly. He let out a large breath as he plopped back down next to Zhangjing, his arm returning to its natural position as casually as it had been placed there in the first place.

“Thanks. I was hoping to have something flashy for the next dance practice. I haven’t been able to practice much while in Taiwan, but at least I could bring back something new.” Yanjun leaned back to rest his neck against the support behind him, looking up at the sky. The sun had slipped away and the night had trickled in quietly during their conversation, so as not to disturb these two boys on the park bench below.

“I respect that. You’re a pretty boy who works hard. Who would’ve thought?” Yanjun’s eyes slid to Zhangjing, who had picked up the leaf Yanjun had been twirling earlier.

“You’re quite the singer, you know that, right?” Zhangjing looked up in surprise at the sudden comment. There was a blush flooding his cheeks that may have been due to the heat, unrelenting despite the sun’s retirement.

“Thanks,” he murmured with a gentle smile. Yanjun wondered why Zhangjing was so humble. He was reminded of the boy, even smaller than he already was, in his arms, with wings for ribs and wilted leaves for hair. He felt a familiar something rise up inside of him.

“Truth or dare?” Zhangjing coughed back a choke, shaking his head adamantly and putting his hands up.

“Not with you.” Yanjun furrowed his eyebrows. “I mean, not because it’s you. Well, yeah, because it’s you.” Zhangjing took a deep breath to compose himself, an embarrassed smile flitting across his face. “You’re just way too good at that game. I don’t want a repeat of my emotional episode.” 

A soft laugh escaped Yanjun’s mouth. “It’s a little less frank that way, compared to me just straight-up asking you about your eating habits… which may have been my intention.”

The two looked up at the sky stretched out above them. Yanjun counted the seconds as he counted constellations and thought about the lights he saw reflected in Zhangjing’s almost-tears yesterday night, the same ones that later ran down his cheeks like a meteor shower. He concluded that he might have preferred the stars in Zhangjing’s eyes to the ones floating above him. “I like ambiguity,” came the final answer, and the laugh accompanying the statement reminded Yanjun of the nothing-smile he hated so much.

There was a silence, though it didn’t seem as clean-cut as the one in the practice room. The air was too humid, thick with whatever was in the air and whatever was between them. Yanjun couldn’t seem to shake off his guilt, overtaking him like the red on those almost-autumn leaves.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, though he was afraid of the answer.

“Honestly? Heavy.” There were too many meanings to the word and Yanjun didn’t like any of them. _Ambiguity indeed,_ he thought sourly.

“As opposed to?”

A shrug danced across the corner of Yanjun’s periphery. “Weightless, I guess.” Another silence. Yanjun didn’t know how to grab ahold of the something that seemed to be slipping right out of his hands. 

“Where?” he asked, though he didn’t know what he meant by the question.

“I don’t know? My stomach... heart. Anywhere, really. I guess it all just feels heavy.” Yanjun wasn’t sure what it meant that Zhangjing could answer a question Yanjun didn’t even understand. He wasn’t sure why he couldn’t look at the boy next to him. He could only resort to staring at the sky, as if the answer to his problems was spelled out across Orion’s belt.

“There’s a constellation, Crux. I think it might just be the smallest constellation, but it’s one of the brightest.” He heard a shift in clothing as Zhangjing turned to him. 

“And?” Yanjun shrugged. He closed his eyes and wondered if he could memorize the sky onto the back of his eyelids.

“I don’t know. I guess it’s reassuring to know there’s no correlation between size and how bright you are.” Yanjun opened his eyes against the silence, only to find an astonished boy looking at him. “What?”

“You’re _such_ a nerd!” Laughter, loud and full and almost annoying (if it wasn’t so damn endearing) rang through the night. Yanjun felt the onslaught of several hits as Zhangjing slapped him. His mouth twitched in embarrassment.

“I read it. In a book. Once. I was. Just trying. To be. Helpful,” he gritted out through clenched teeth, feeling a warmth rush to his face. The boy beside him continued in his hysterics, practically doubling over Yanjun’s lap. 

“I’m sorry,” Zhangjing breathed out after he was done, wiping a tear from his eye and straightening up. He saw Yanjun’s gloomy expression and hiccuped in amusement, trying with difficulty to stop as Yanjun’s expression continued to darken. “I’m sorry!” Several giggles escaped from his mouth. “That was the last thing I was expecting to come out of your mouth. And you were so serious about it!” Zhangjing started laughing again at the thought and fell back into hysterics.

Yanjun felt his embarrassmaent transition into something else as he watched Zhangjing laugh. Embarrassment became affection? as he noticed how Zhangjing covered his mouth when he laughed so intensely but left his eye-smile on full display, how he hit everything and anything - including Yanjun - and threatened to collapse onto the ground in his merriment. Affection became almost... pride? at the thought that he had caused this, even though he hadn’t intended it. Pride? became a smile, one that carried embarrassment, affection, pride, and possibly something else across his face.

“Feeling weightless now?” Yanjun asked as Zhangjing slowly composed himself from his second bout of laughter. Zhangjing looked at him, slightly surprised at the question. His cheeks were flushed and his hair slightly disheveled. Yanjun’s urge to pat his head returned with full force and he picked at the bench’s wood, new but quickly aging, in the case that his self-control betrayed him. He watched Zhangjing, slightly lost, blink at him before a smile, soft but somehow bright - like the stars in his eyes, Yanjun noted absentmindedly - appeared on his face.

“Yeah... Yeah, I guess so,” he murmured, his smile brightening by the second. Yanjun felt the same smile from before - though with a little bit more affection and pride than embarrassment - come back.

“Good. I’m glad.” Yanjun gently sketched out small nothings on the wood with his fingertip.

“Yanjun, thank you for your intentions this morning... but, please, let me handle it myself. I’m trying.” Though he didn’t want to, Yanjun couldn’t help but nod in agreement at the sincerity in Zhangjing’s eyes. “And thanks for bringing me out here today. If you hadn’t, I’d probably still be lying down and moping.” A sudden grin, slightly mischievous, flashed onto Zhangjing’s face. “And, plus I never would have found out cold handsome Yanjun was such a nerd.”

Yanjun rolled his eyes and looked away to the wood underneath his fingers, but he was smiling. 

\---

Zhangjing felt an arm rub against his shoulder as someone ran up to his side. He was walking in the halls, on the way to the cafeteria for dinner.

“Wanna hear a pizza joke?” Zhangjing rolled his eyes.

“No. I really don’t.” He passed by a trash can and took the opportunity to throw away his apple core; it was useless against the person walking next to him anyway.

“Fine. It was too cheesy anyway.” Zhangjing pursed his lips in annoyance (and only slightly to hold back small laughter at the joke).

“Is it too late to reverse the last two and a half months of my life and avoid making the worst decisions of my life, starting with talking to you?” They finally arrived at the cafeteria doors, and Zhangjing stopped to stick his tongue out at Yanjun before walking inside.

“You’d miss me, babe.” Zhangjing ignored the punch to his heart. Yanjun was always like this.

“I miss peace and quiet.” Yanjun laughed and ruffled Zhangjing’s hair. Zhangjing ignored the feeling of his heart being run over and trampled on inside his chest and made a mental note to somehow buy a replacement later. _Yanjun’s always like this,_ he reminded himself as they walked towards the food.

They were the last ones to arrive at the table and sat in the two seats left open for them. Just as the trainees had learned to leave two seats on opposite ends of the table for the two so they wouldn’t go at each other’s throats two years ago, they had learned to leave two seats right next to each other - well, they had been forced to learn, considering Yanjun had made a huge fuss about having to push over Dinghao every morning until he got the message back in September.

There was another brush of shoulders as they sat down, and Zhangjing bit the inside of his cheek and scooted closer to Dinghao instead. At least _there_ was physical contact he could emotionally handle. A shift in the air next to Zhangjing’s right ear indicated exactly what he dreaded while sitting at the cafeteria table, though it had consistently occurred for over two months now.

“How’s your stomach feeling?” Zhangjing didn’t mind the question as much as the boy asking it. Well, he didn’t even mind the boy asking it, just the closeness of said boy. He pulled his head back just a centimeter, small enough that it wasn’t obvious but enough so that he didn’t have to feel Yanjun’s hair tickle the side of his cheek.

“Weightless,” he murmured back, and watched with a sigh as Yanjun spooned just a little bit more rice from his plate to Zhangjing’s. They had been playing this question “game” to replace truth or dare for a while now. It narrowed down the question to Yanjun’s intentions and allowed a little bit of ambiguity for Zhangjing, which he had liked. The only rule? Zhangjing had to tell the truth, and he couldn’t bring himself to lie to Yanjun’s face anyway. He picked up his spoon reluctantly.

_Heavy,_ he had wanted to say, but not for the reasons Yanjun would have perceived the answer to be. He was still hungry though, so he really hadn’t lied. Truth was, Zhangjing had felt the weight of an ever-growing something ever since the beginning of November.

Zhangjing did _not_ like Yanjun.

(Zhangjing only liked Yanjun a little bit, but there was a high possibility _it_ was completely platonic.)

(There was a high possibility that Zhangjing was trying to convince himself _it_ was completely platonic.)

Whatever _it_ was, _it_ was all Yanjun’s fault. He was just always so attentive and caring even though he looked like the biggest fuckboy in the world. And he always had those lame jokes that always forced Zhangjing to hold back his laughter so he didn’t have to see Yanjun’s stupid self-satisfied smirk because it just made him even more handsome (which he initially had thought was impossible, but Yanjun always defied odds anyway) and his heart could barely handle his regular face in the first place.

_It_ had been building up from the first day, leaking in little by little - just as autumn red bleeds into summer green, trickling in so that one passing by may notice it without thought one day, but only realizing the significance later, stepping outside at a random time and, there it happens, when suddenly everything in sight is red. The first time Zhangjing and Yanjun were in the practice room together, he felt a something that made Yanjun’s presence, though unknown, feel so familiar. _It_ was there on the second day when they had sat on the bench outside, replacing the dense humidity of early September with something much lighter and more breathable and, well, weightless. 

There _it_ was. Yanjun made Zhangjing feel weightless.

He wondered, then, why this something sat so heavily inside of him. _It_ was like a caged bird, heavy in its confinements until it was... released?

He wondered when summer had turned into autumn and why everything seemed red.


	5. Chapter 5

“Can’t say I’m not surprised you chose the ‘What I Miss’ team,” Yanjun said, setting down his tray and stepping over the bench to sit down. It was dinner at the dorms, and the Idol Producer trainees were as loud as ever in the cafeteria. Yanjun felt a hint of nostalgia for the Banana building, which rivaled in its loudness but with a familiarity this one didn’t have. He felt the loud silence of four absences at the table - they had said their farewells to Ruotian, Jingzuo, Maotong, and Zhixie just that morning. Yanjun thought about how his skills compared to theirs and concluded he might just be reduced to another empty seat after the next elimination. The glaring 28 running across the front of his sweater agreed. 

“What can I say? I love clichés. What about you, Mr. I’m-Suddenly-Going-To-Take-A-Shot-At-Singing-A-Love-Song?” Zhangjing retorted, immediately stealing a piece of chicken off of Yanjun’s plate with his chopsticks. Yanjun smiled at Zhangjing, who popped it into his mouth and chewed happily, wiggling his eyebrows at him. 

Zhangjing was genuinely improving his eating habits, especially after arriving at Idol Producer. He didn’t feel the pressuring gazes of their staff and credited his extra eating to his need to sing more while on the show - a heavy stomach supports the vocal cords, as he always claimed. Yanjun was just happy that looking at food didn’t make Zhangjing sick anymore. He was starting to see the happy-virus-Zhangjing he was used to a little bit more every day; he was content with knowing he wouldn’t have to worry about Zhangjing’s habits if he happened to leave soon.

Yanjun remembered feeling slightly useless at first - it seemed that the one obligation that had brought the two of them into friendship in the first place was slowly disappearing. It was childish to think it wouldn’t ever go away - of course, it’s not like Zhangjing would need Yanjun forever - but it eased Yanjun’s mind to think that what had initially tightened their bond wasn’t the only thing keeping them together anymore. Over the course of just a couple of months, Zhangjing had managed to become the person closest to this cold Yanjun.

“I wanted to practice my singing,” Yanjun answered with a shrug. He was honestly afraid this stage was going to be his last on Idol Producer and he wanted to seize the opportunity and practice his vocals while he still had the chance. He wasn’t sure why couldn’t admit that to Zhangjing just yet. Maybe it was because he was ranked 10, so close to fulfilling his dream, while Yanjun was sitting at a measly 28. He knew Zhangjing would just fuss over his worries and reassure him, but Yanjun was significantly more realistic than his counterpart.

Zhangjing chuckled. “Just don’t kill Dinghao. And don’t forget to ask for help.” Zhangjing smiled at Yanjun with a sincerity that made Yanjun bite the inside of his lip. He wondered sometimes if he deserved Zhangjing.

“I heard my name. Talking trash, fools?” they heard, signaling the arrival of their extremely loud colleague. Yanjun rolled his eyes.

“I’m surprised you’re sitting here instead of at-” Yanjun coughed conspicuously, making a grand gesture with his waving hand at the table where the Yuehua trainees usually sat. Dinghao turned a color reflective of the Idol Producer red-orange hoodies.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he responded haughtily, quickly turning up his chin in disgust and spooning some rice into his mouth. Zhangjing giggled and clapped his hands in anticipation.

“Does Dinghao have a crush? Spill!” Dinghao sent Zhangjing a look of disdain.

“Do I, Lu Dinghao, look like I’d settle for any of the losers in this building? I need a prince charming, not a lame minion enthusiast.”

“A… who?” Zhangjing looked to Yanjun for confirmation and found him laughing intensely into a fist.

“You do realize you just gave yourself away,” he coughed out between laughs. “We never said anything about minions, you Xinchun enthusiast.” The color drained from Dinghao’s face, and he stuffed quite the bite into his mouth while flashing Yanjun the finger.

“Xinchun?” Zhangjing clasped his hands together in excitement. “That is so adorable!”

“You would think it’d be adorable, but it starts getting a little sad watching Dinghao watch Xinchun,” Yanjun interjected. He paused his criticism, eyes illuminating with a revelation. He leaned towards the other two and gestured them forward, as if telling a secret. “Do you think his minion obsession counts in making him a furry?”

Yanjun was encountered with several grains of rice thrown from Dinghao’s plate and a sharp jab from Zhangjing’s elbow. “I hope you choke on your chicken, you waste of breath,” Dinghao muttered.

“Bet you wish you sat at the Yuehua table now, huh?” Dinghao made a motion to slap Yanjun but was stopped by Zhangjing, who was laughing profusely and trying to stop their bickering.

“How is your team going to survive with all this pettiness?” he asked, grabbing onto Yanjun’s arm for support as he laughed. Zhangjing looked at Yanjun and put up a scolding finger. “Stop picking unnecessary fights.” Yanjun clutched his chest dramatically, his mouth open in surprise.

“Why do I always get in trouble for stuff like this? He’s just as much at fault!” he exclaimed, childishly pointing at Dinghao like they were a pair of prepubescent siblings.

“Because at least Dinghao’s cute,” Zhangjing replied, slapping his arm playfully and returning to his food. He felt a finger poke at his cheek and turned back to Yanjun, who was trying to make a pouty face - and failing.

“You wound me, babe.” Dinghao made a gagging sound from across the table. Zhangjing turned back to his food without a word, but there was a light flush stretching across the top of his nose and cheeks like freckles would.

Yanjun found that he couldn’t entirely summon the will to look away from Zhangjing. He had quite the staring tendency and had done so many times before, but the boy in front of him compelled him to stare nonetheless, in case he had missed something the previous time he’d attempted to memorize his face. The curly hair that usually sat on his head was straightened for the show, but the brown, matching the one circling in his eyes, was no doubt the same. The shadows underneath his cheekbones had disappeared weeks ago, replaced with a little bit of extra skin that Yanjun was not expecting and was even slightly perturbed by because he suddenly found an urge to squish it. He only looked at his lips when Zhangjing was eating - for that, due to his unabashed eating manners, was when Zhangjing was ugliest, ironically enough, and was therefore the only time Yanjun could _stand_ to look at his lips. Whether that was to avoid a certain question meandering through his insides and tickling his chest when he stared at Zhangjing or to give himself at least a little bit of plausible deniability was left up to Yanjun’s own devices.

“Hey, Nongnong! Come sit by me!” Zhangjing looked up for 0.8 seconds from his food (the longest he could endure when immersed in his eating zone) to wave Chen Linong over. Linong perked up at hearing a familiar voice, giving a bright smile as he excitedly walked over with his plate. Yanjun recognized the adorable Taiwanese boy he had seen walk in on the first day of evaluations and remembered wanting to pat him on the head because of how much he looked like a puppy.

“Hey, Zhangjing! Weren’t we just talking about how we wanted sesame chicken? I’m so happy!” 

Yanjun watched, a smile threatening to twitch his lips as the two conversed happily. He didn’t know when Zhangjing befriended Linong but _did_ know that Zhangjing was just that sociable. His bunny smile and exuding amiability made him an easy friend. His light personality matched Linong’s really well, so their quick friendship made sense. Despite himself, Yanjun noted how, on the other hand, his personality opposed Zhangjing’s. Yanjun didn’t burst with happiness all the time, or even want to make that many friends, to be honest. He was the type of person that built trust over a long period of time and distributed that trust to a close-knit of friends. He was “cold Yanjun” for a reason.

He felt what might have been a pang as he realized that _those_ \- like Chen Linong - were the kind of people Zhangjing might belong with. Zhangjing and Yanjun weren’t even friends at first because their personalities clashed that much; they were just thrown together due to circumstances and happened to become accustomed each other. It wasn’t even Zhangjing’s decision; Yanjun had been the overbearing one, pestering Zhangjing into confession and then pestering him everyday onward. _Damn my tsundere character,_ Yanjun thought, glumly taking a bite of food.

“Why do you look like someone just committed a sin in front of your salad?” Dinghao asked, taking a break from gazing longingly at the Yuehua table.

“More like in front of my chicken,” Yanjun murmured. He saw Dinghao send him a concerned look and flashed him the finger.

“Bitch,” Dinghao said, sticking out his tongue. “Xinchun wouldn’t treat me like this.”

“Yeah, he wouldn’t notice your presence long enough to treat you like anything.” Dinghao picked up his butter knife and prepared to lunge, only backing down when he saw an approaching Chaoze, who had been late coming in from practice.

“Why are you glaring so intently at -” Chaoze coughed at the end of his phrase to make a point, sitting down on Yanjun’s other side. Yanjun raised his eyebrows at him. “Oh, please, it was obvious. I could see it all the way from the food line.”

“I don’t know.” Yanjun shrugged. Chaoze knew when to stop and did, instead asking Dinghao why he was “sending heart-eyes to giraffe-neck,” leaving Yanjun to think about how he _did_ know why he had been glaring at Zhangjing and Linong. Or, at least, he thought he did. 

\---

When Zhangjing walked into the cafeteria the next evening, he was greeted by quite the scene. Dinghao, ever the drama queen, looked like he was trying to physically manifest his love into the distance separating him and Huang Xinchun - there had apparently been an incident that night when Xinchun had spit water into Dinghao’s face during a team-bonding game and Dinghao, though disgusted at first, accepted it as a blessing and had not stopped staring since. Xinchun, in turn, was extremely oblivious as he continued to play around with the minion plushie he almost always brought to the cafeteria (word around the dorms was that he cried for half an hour straight when the staff attempted to confiscate it because it was an “unnecessary item”). Though disturbing, at least that aspect of the scene wasn’t unexpected. What _did_ surprise Zhangjing, though, was seeing how upset Yanjun was.

Zhangjing had learned how to discern the difference between Yanjun’s RBF, which he had been cursed with since birth, and his actual emotions, so he definitely did not expect to see him look so... angry? He couldn’t really tell what the specific emotion was, but he _could_ tell that Yanjun looked like he was about to punch Chen Linong any second now. There was a certain intensity in Yanjun’s eyes, which were trained on the cafeteria table in front of him, as if he was salvaging his self-control purely through that stare.

Zhangjing was quite concerned. He specifically recalled Yanjun talking about how adorable Linong had been on the first day, even expressing interest in talking to him because they came from the same country, and there had been no problem yesterday. What could possibly be the problem? It was _Chen Linong,_ resident sunshine-boy next door, and yet the frost Yanjun radiated was rivaling the warmness of Linong’s attempt to converse with him.

As if sensing Zhangjing’s presence before he had finished walking up, Yanjun’s head snapped up and made direct eye contact with him. Zhangjing had to force himself to hold back the gasp that threatened to slip through his teeth. Something was definitely wrong.

Almost immediately, Yanjun stood up from the table, disregarding his uneaten plate of food as he walked towards Zhangjing, who had paused in his tracks. Yanjun marched past Zhangjing without bothering to say anything, leaving the cafeteria room. Zhangjing made eye contact with Linong, who looked worriedly at the uneaten plate of food but smiled brightly when he saw Zhangjing, waving him over. He sent him a halfhearted wave and an apologetic smile before turning around and following Yanjun, disregarding his plate of food on a nearby table. There had been no words spoken, but Zhangjing felt something beyond explanation compelling him to follow the other out.

Zhangjing found Yanjun outside like he knew he would, sitting on a park bench with his head tilted back to the sky. He wondered how he could still look so handsome, shrouded in darkness with tension disrupting his features so prevalently.

“You’re going to get a cold, you know?” Zhangjing muttered, taking a seat next to him. It was December and though the first snow hadn’t fallen yet, the air held all the crisp coldness of the peak of winter. His attempt to casualize the conversation was ignored.

“I didn’t invite you out here,” came the apathetic reply. Zhangjing looked at Yanjun, eyes wide. He wasn’t looking at him, his eyes closed tightly instead. Zhangjing knew Yanjun had a tendency to visualize too much with his eyes closed and wondered what he saw against the back of his eyelids. He felt that Yanjun’s face was too sharp, too strained, and felt an urge to run his finger along his face and smooth out the lines surrounding his mouth, eyes, forehead, to relieve the crevice between his furrowed eyebrows.

Zhangjing hesitated, staring at the eyes that were shutting him out from the boy next to him. Had his intuition been wrong? He had been so certain that Yanjun wanted - needed? - his company.

“I thought you might have needed me.” The words were warm, but were nothing against the cold that he felt reflected back - whether it was solely from the winter controlling the air, he did not know.

Zhangjing was watching, so he saw how quickly Yanjun’s eyes opened. Yanjun turned his head to look at Zhangjing, and Zhangjing saw in Yanjun’s eyes a darkness he hadn’t seen since Yanjun had first yelled in frustration at the chubby boy who stepped on his feet during dance practice.

“Who said I needed you?” 

Zhangjing hated himself for using the word. How could he just assume something like that? Why couldn’t he have said wanted? He hated that the word had slipped off his tongue so casually, almost as if he had wanted the satisfaction of being able to say that to him, or needed the confirmation that Yanjun needed him. Needed was such a strong word. Too strong. Their friendship of several months had progressed significantly, but it was a friendship of several months all the same.

Yanjun was right. Who said he needed him?

Who said that just because Zhangjing needed Yanjun meant the feelings were reciprocated? Because Zhangjing needed Yanjun, he really did. He needed him long before looking at Yanjun sent his heart into overdrive, before a simple look made Zhangjing’s stomach turn heavy but threaten to fly out of him at the same time, before realizing that needed meant everything and that was what Yanjun was.

Needed meant everything. And there was no way Zhangjing was everything to Yanjun. Of course he wasn’t. Zhangjing was practically emotional baggage, forcing his problems onto Yanjun who, in turn, was forced to listen. Yanjun had spent the last several months taking care of Zhangjing, who was pathetic and _needed_ him to, like any good person would in the face of a struggling colleague. What had Zhangjing ever done that would, in any way, ever make Yanjun _need_ him?

Zhangjing watched as Yanjun stood up against the silence, making his way back inside. It was different as Zhangjing stared at his retreating back. He didn’t feel the invitation he thought he’d felt in the cafeteria. Yanjun was closed off and... cold. He walked off as if there was nothing between them and Zhangjing wondered if there was, if he had imagined everything.

The question resurfaced as Zhangjing felt his heart rise in his throat: What had Zhangjing ever done that would, in any way ever make Yanjun _need_ him?

Zhangjing looked up to the sky, as if looking for an answer. He searched for the stars Yanjun had, over time, taught him to recognize during their frequent trips outside.

Nothing stared back at him.


	6. Chapter 6

Yanjun had fucked up.

He knew it right at the beginning, when he found himself walking away under a sky void of stars and discovered that he didn’t have enough pride (or lack thereof) to turn around and hold Zhangjing tight in his arms instead.

He knew it when he realized the reason he had been stuck in the practice room, staring at himself in the mirror and redoing the same dumb move over and over again, was because he was too afraid to go to the cafeteria during mealtime.

He knew it when he realized he didn’t have to worry about avoiding the cafeteria room, as Chaoze pulled him off to the side one evening with a grip that was intense but exhausted at the same time. His ears felt like they were filled with cotton but he heard the muffled “I don’t know if he’s eaten in two days” like stones dropping into his heart and knew it:

Yanjun had wholeheartedly, indisputably, absolutely fucked up.

Chaoze poked a demanding finger into Yanjun’s shoulder and, though he was younger and shorter than Yanjun, radiated the intimidation only possible in such a pressing, competitive environment. “I don’t know what happened between you two and it probably won’t matter if I did either way. Yanjun, you don’t get to choose this for him. He’s so close. Oh, God, he’s _so close_ to his dreams.” Yanjun saw a watering in Chaoze’s eyes that made him bite the inside of his cheek and dig his nails into the inside of his fists so his eyes wouldn’t betray him and mimic the action.

Yanjun was an idiot. He didn’t just fuck it up for himself over a handful of stupid personal feelings, but for Zhangjing too. Little Zhangjing, who just wanted to sing for the rest of his life. Little, sensitive Zhangjing, who was unfortunate enough to be at the receiving end of the collateral damage from Yanjun’s insecurities.

“The practice rooms have been crazy the last couple of days because rehearsals are tonight, so I haven’t been in their room, but Nongong” - Yanjun clenched his jaw - “keeps talking about how he won’t stop practicing and how out-of-it he is.” 

Yanjun made a move to leave the room.

“Four of us are already gone,” continued Chaoze, and the emotional crack in his voice stopped Yanjun in his tracks. “It’s already too much having four empty seats are a table. Two more is too many.” Chaoze walked past Yanjun and left first, leaving Yanjun alone in the “Ai Ni” team’s room.

Yanjun looked at the mirror and knew he should leave to get his hair and makeup done soon, but couldn’t work up the will to do it. He couldn’t press down the heaviness in his chest, couldn’t erase the guilt that had been plaguing him. He hadn’t seen Zhangjing in almost three days now, minus the time he walked into Dinghao’s room to drag him to practice (he had transitioned from shamelessly staring at Huang Xinchun to cowering away when minion boy was within a 10-foot radius) and saw a flash of curly brown hair disappear behind the bathroom door so quickly Yanjun might have imagined it.

It was all Yanjun’s fault.

When he’d walked into the cafeteria and had been bombarded by an overexcited Chen Linong - for some reason, it really excited him that they served sesame chicken two days in a row - it only reminded him of how much of a downer _he_ was in comparison. The insecurity that had surfaced the day before, that Yanjun really didn’t deserve Zhangjing and their friendship logically made no sense, revisited with an even stronger force than before.

It was like a slap in the face to realize that, quite possibly, he was feeling like this because he was afraid of Zhangjing realizing this. Of course he would. He didn’t need Yanjun to supervise his eating habits like an overbearing parent anymore and there they were, in a building filled with charismatic personalities and smiles just as bright as Zhangjing’s. Why choose a winter frost like Yanjun when there were sunshine-boys like Chen Linong everywhere in sight?

And that is where Yanjun was scared, in the depths of his brain where a sliver of doubt whispered to him that he may not be good enough. And that is where Yanjun realized, sitting in the cafeteria room and quietly staring at the untouched plate of food he was waiting to eat until Zhangjing plucked what he wanted off of it, that he needed Zhangjing.

He needed Zhangjing to smile at him with those bunny teeth, to bicker with him over whether Dinghao and Chaoze would end up together (Zhangjing thought so, Yanjun disagreed) and then bicker over everything else (whether spoon-fork hybrids were called sporks or foons, if the “s” or the “c” was silent in “scent,” how to make the Pokemon realm possible on Earth), to laugh at his jokes and slap him so hard it didn’t hurt because it was done with so much amusement that Yanjun didn’t care to notice. He needed Zhangjing to stay with him and tolerate him because he doubted anyone else but Zhangjing would be able to.

And that scared him. It scared him so bad to think he, cold Yanjun, needed another person so badly and that said person quite possibly didn’t need him in return. 

He had looked up from the plate of food and made eye contact with Zhangjing and it absolutely terrified him how his entire existence seemed to throb with something he still couldn’t name. He went outside to stare at the stars for answers like he always did and found none. He asked the world what to do and the black night stared blankly back at him; rather than Yanjun finding stars, Zhangjing found Yanjun, and it scared him to think Zhangjing knew a part of him whispered for him to follow him outside when he had marched past. He thought of the night he asked Zhangjing where he felt heavy and Zhangjing could answer a question Yanjun didn’t understand and wondered what it meant. The world remained, unflinching and without light, and Yanjun closed his eyes to more darkness, afraid of the answers the lights in Zhangjing’s eyes held.

He felt a wave of paralysis wash over him like a bucket of ice-water when he heard the words “I thought you might have needed me” drift around him like little lightning bugs in the face of midnight. He felt a surge of gratitude and then a surge of fear and opened his eyes and realized the sky was still dark and opened his mouth and extinguished the lightning bugs with words just as dark.

\---

Yanjun was watching the monitor with burning eyes as Zhangjing sang his heart and soul into the song, as he always did. There was something distinct about this performance he couldn’t pinpoint and it made his stomach and heart and everything else inside of him churn with an inner tsunami. He felt rush after rush of affection, guilt, regret, and a billion of other somethings that filled every cell in his body until he was on the verge of bursting.

He watched as Zhangjing ended the song, hand reaching for the camera and eyes glittering with emotion. “He’s singing that for you. I hope you know that,” he heard Dinghao murmur from beside him, blotting sweat off his forehead from when they had performed earlier.

Yanjun turned away from the screen.

\---

Yanjun stood silently, watching Zhangjing tense as they announced the ranks for the vocal position. Zhangjing was trying to compose himself in the face of possible disappointment, but Yanjun could see right through his nerves - how he was gently clenching and unclenching his hands into fists, how his shoulders moved up and down with larger breaths than usual, how he couldn’t remove his gaze from the screen that was several seconds from displaying the results.

He felt a great urge to do _something_ \- squeeze his hand, hug him, whisper “I believe in you. You have no idea how beautiful you were up there” and a bunch of other things that he knew couldn’t even _begin_ to convey how he felt because there really weren’t any words in existence to describe that.

When they announced that he’d tied with Wenjun as best vocal, Yanjun wanted to slide up beside him, ruffle his hair (and respond with a smirk when Zhangjing would send him a look of irritation for messing up the stylist’s hard work, just like he knew he would), and tell him “I don’t know, your high note seemed a little unstable” because he wanted Zhangjing to smile at him and hit him - just _him_ \- despite all of the other people that would crowd around him.

Instead, he stood idly as Dinghao, Chaoze, Linong, and others started jumping onto him in excitement. He saw his small stature disappear behind lanky arms and flashy outfits and wondered if he felt as empty without Yanjun as Yanjun felt without him. When he couldn’t look anymore, he looked away and could have sworn he felt a gaze on the side of his face. When he couldn’t not look anymore, he snuck up behind Zhangjing and placed his hand on his hair like he’d wanted to.

He slipped away before Zhangjing could turn around, afraid that his response wouldn’t be the one he’d imagined.

\---

“I’m sick of this! At first, I regretted ever encouraging your friendship because you and Zhangjing got grossly close, but you guys are even worse without each other,” Dinghao exclaimed during one lunch. It was just Yanjun, Dinghao, and Chaoze at their section of the table now. Zhangjing hadn’t stopped by in four days and Linong started spending the mealtimes with Zhangjing, wherever he was, instead - Yanjun couldn’t help but bitterly think that he should be the one accompanying Zhangjing if he felt lonely, and then became even more bitter when he realized that if he hadn’t been the absolute idiot he was, they wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place. Zhangjing would be at the table, happily filling his stomach and stealing Yanjun’s banana milk when he thought he wasn’t looking (he was), talking animatedly about how glad he was that he was put into the “I Will Always Remember” team, mouth filled with rice and eyes filled with light.

Yanjun felt a punch on his arm and looked over to the perpetrator, an even more frustrated Dinghao from before. “You don’t even pay attention anymore! You’re either staring intensely at Zhangjing all the time with those dumb furrowed eyebrows of yours or fantasizing about him when he’s not around to stare at!” Dinghao suddenly slumped, pouting. “We haven’t even had a proper argument in, like, two days.”

“I do _not_ do that,” Yanjun responded defensively. He rolled his eyes at the second half of the comment. “And grow up. I thought you’d be too busy with lover boy to notice.” He knew there wasn’t much he could say to defend himself, so it was always a safe play to divert the attention in hopes of distracting Dinghao, who had a smaller attention span than a degenerate squirrel.

“I’m done with Xinchun. I couldn’t even make moves on him because I was too busy worrying over _your_ situation,” retorted Dinghao, and Yanjun heard a muttered “idiot” from his side of the table. Dinghao was right for once. How did Yanjun manage to negatively affect all three of his closest friends in one go? 

“Sorry,” Yanjun muttered, fiddling with the plastic cap of his banana milk bottle. 

“Nah, it’s fine. I think he’s in love with Zibo.” In his peripheral vision, Yanjun saw Chaoze softly smack Dinghao and make a face, dramatically tilting his chin at Yanjun. “Oh, right! This isn’t about me, ex-lover boy. This is about you, _current_ lover boy.”

Yanjun looked up, an eyebrow raised at the two morons sitting across from him. “Lover boy?” Did he accidentally stare too long at another boy while lost in thought? Yanjun internally groaned. He couldn’t have Chaoze and Dinghao pester him about love interests at a time like this; he honestly hadn’t even had time to properly _look_ at the other boys (except for the time he touched Jeffery’s pecs, but that was only because he was curious as to why he bragged about them so much).

“Yeah, you and your soulmate are having relationship problems and we’re here to help!” Dinghao and Chaoze interlocked arms ecstatically, the two sending Yanjun a thumbs-up in unison. _Had they practiced this?_ “Even though it’s a little disgusting being third and fourth wheels sometimes, we’re willing to compromise our comfort for your happiness,” Dinghao lamented, as if he was a medieval hero preparing to make the most selfless sacrifice to save his village.

“Relationship problems?” Yanjun spluttered. “You mean with Zhangjing?”

“He questioned the relationship problems part but not the soulmate part!” Chaoze clapped his hands giddily, grabbing onto Dinghao for support. Yanjun groaned out loud this time, slapping his forehead with his hand.

“You guys are seriously Dumb and Dumber. What the fuck are you guys talking about? Has the pressure of the competition finally gotten to the last of your measly brain cells?” 

“Quite the contrary, my friend. This last week or so pushed me to realize just how whipped you are for our dear Zhangjing,” Dinghao answered. Chaoze nodded furiously at the words, pointing a finger at Yanjun.

“At first I thought you two just had an in-the-closet relationship and pretended to be platonic until you guys went out on those stupid nightly trips outside without telling anyone,” Chaoze interjected. He shook his head slowly in disappointment. “But, no, you two are just in denial.”

Yanjun gaped at the two sitting across from him, taken aback by the sudden onslaught of accusations. “What? I do _not_ have any feelings for Zhangjing,” he said automatically. 

Chaoze and Dinghao looked at each other for a couple of seconds without saying anything. Yanjun watched as Chaoze raised his eyebrows at Dinghao twice, squinted, then tilted his head sharply in Yanjun’s direction. Dinghao puffed his cheeks, shaking his head, and Chaoze slightly opened his mouth in revelation, nodding his head and sending his counterpart a thumbs-up. _What?_ Yanjun wondered if Zhangjing was right about whether or not they would end up together. No one else would tolerate or even encourage their idiotic tendencies like this. The two finally nodded in unison, turning to Yanjun, hands clasped together on the table in front of them as if they were about to deliver a great prophecy.

“Think about it, Yanjun,” Chaoze finally said after a long pause. Yanjun threw his arms up in frustration, standing up.

“All of _that_ for _that_?” he exclaimed. Dinghao shrugged and Yanjun sighed heavily, running a hand down his face. “You guys are idiots and I’m leaving.” He walked away, hearing a “Seriously, think about it!” follow him out.

Yanjun thought about _it._

He thought about _it_ a lot.

He thought about _it_ as he walked down the hall outside the cafeteria, wandering aimlessly through the corridors, walking everywhere and nowhere at the same time. He thought about _it_ as he passed quickly by the dorms, not knowing if he was either trying to find Zhangjing or avoid him. He thought about _it_ as he walked past the “Firewalking” team’s practice room and automatically turned away from the working trainees despite his position as leader.

He was thinking about _it_ as he passed by one of the many corners in the Idol Producer building, heard the loud and almost annoying giggle that followed Chen Linong’s joke, and stopped. Yanjun neared the end of the hallway and peeked in (against his better judgement). He saw Zhangjing, ever so small and, Yanjun noted with alarm, increasingly smaller than the last time he’d seen him, standing on his tiptoes and attempting with waving hands to grab a bag of shrimp chips held aloft by Linong.

Though the “What if the Citizen Producers see how much you’ve been eating and stop voting for you, Zhangjing-ge!” was said jokingly, Yanjun was thinking about _it_ when he saw Zhangjing bite his lip just slightly. He then thought of the boy pressed up against him that first night - small and fragile, with broken wings for ribs and wilted leaves for hair, in his arms, the lights like guiding stars hanging above them in an otherwise dark practice room, with an encompassing and light and familiar and slightly overwhelming but extremely welcoming _something_ filling the room and the space between them (even though there wasn’t much).

He thought about that _it._ He thought about that _something._ Were they the same thing?

Before he could think, Yanjun stepped forward, from behind the wall and into the corner and up to Chen Linong. He felt his fists fill with the cloth of Linong’s blue sweater and the impact of the wall as Linong’s back met it.

Everything went red.


	7. Chapter 7

Linong’s eyes were soft as they met Yanjun’s intense ones, Yanjun’s chest against Linong’s and Linong’s back against the wall. At first, his hands were light as they grabbed Yanjun’s wrists, hovering with confusion. It didn’t take him long to realize Yanjun wasn’t just playing around; his hands were too tight in clutching Linong’s sweater, his eyes too unforgiving as they bore straight through him. 

“Dude, what are you doing?” Linong asked, his hands forgetting their previous hesitation and attempting to unlatch Yanjun’s hold on him. The younger boy, though he looked weak, exerted a force that made Yanjun grit his teeth and tighten his hold, pushing forward. Linong’s back hit the wall again.

“Yanjun!” He felt a push to his side and didn’t need to glance over to know it was Zhangjing. His voice was interlaced with a worry that only hardened Yanjun’s resolve; he marveled at how he could be so sympathetic for the boy who could so casually pressure him into not eating. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Stay out of this,” he muttered to the side without breaking eye contact with the boy in front of him. “Take that back,” he seethed, bringing his face close to Linong’s in intimidation.

“Take _what_ back? And get off me!” The fabric covering Yanjun’s chest twisted as Linong grabbed him in response. Linong’s eyes steeled, the sunshine boy succumbing to a rare anger at the violence. “When Zhangjing called you temperamental, I didn’t realize you’d react so stupidly to jealousy.”

There was a pregnant pause, heavy as Linong bit his lip in regret immediately, as an almost imperceptible gasp escaped through Zhangjing’s lips.

The pause was broken, shattered by brute force by a boy, so overextended and so insecure. Yanjun was a brewing storm, fueled by guilt and jealousy and, _yes,_ fueled by love to an extent. Linong’s words were like lightning and he followed it naturally with thunder.

A sound resounded as Yanjun’s fist, acting without thought, made contact with Linong’s jaw. The aftereffects of his actions, fragile in foundation but destructive in manifestation, froze him to the spot as he watched Linong stumble to the side, clutching his face. It was a blur as he saw Ziyi, called over by Zhangjing’s shouts for assistance, help him up and out of sight, already explaining how he had the appropriate ointment to apply.

He wasn’t sure how he ended up with Zhangjing as his only company in an empty practice room, though it was filled to the brim with a certain senseless electricity emanating from the older of the two. Yanjun stared blankly at his fist, white at the knuckles from refusing to unfurl. He stared at the hand around his wrist, holding him so tightly he could feel the imprints of Zhangjing’s blunt nails, as if Zhangjing was trying to channel all of his emotions into a single circumference of contact, and concluded that must have been how they ended up in one place together. He stared as the hand let go of him (though he had already concluded that a painful touch was preferred over no touch at all and direly wished the hand would return to anchor him down in a body that felt like it was currently floating away), stared at the red crescents running the side of his forearm, and looked up to stare at Zhangjing.

He wished he hadn’t. 

Yanjun had already expected the disappointment and anger he found staring back at him. He definitely didn’t expect _concern,_ furrowed into the grooves etched into his face, tangible in a single tear that rebelliously fell from red eyes. Zhangjing looked down quickly, wiping it away, as if a tear that left no trace never happened at all.

His heart stuttered and, for the umpteenth time that day, Yanjun’s brain continued on autopilot.

“If you wanted to get me alone in a room with you, all you had to do was ask,” his mouth blabbered without permission. Yanjun internally groaned, and externally slapped himself on the forehead. “I didn’t mean that.”

When Zhangjing looked back up at him, Yanjun was alarmed to find an increasing flow of tears down his face in response to his failed attempt at an inappropriate joke. “I can’t do this,” Zhangjing choked out in a whisper, and Yanjun’s fist finally opened up, as if it intended to stop Zhangjing as he made way for the exit.

There was no need to, as Zhangjing attempted to turn a knob that refused to budge. Zhangjing blew a breath through his mouth in exasperation, fiddling with the knob and even banging on the door several times before giving up, rubbing his temple with two fingers and turning back to the boy he was trying to avoid. Yanjun found that he couldn’t meet eyes with him.

They ended up on opposite sides of the room, Zhangjing staring at one spot on the floor while Yanjun was unable to keep his eyes in just one place. This was the longest and closest they had been together since the night Yanjun left him outside, and yet they had never seemed so far apart. Yanjun looked at Zhangjing, only several meters - though they were somehow so indescribably unbearable - away. He looked at his toes, the ceiling, Zhangjing, the wooden floor, Zhangjing in the mirror; he looked at the crescents like small temporary tattoos, already fading in their regretful evanescence.

He glanced at Zhangjing once more and felt seven words rise up as material as the boy sitting across from him: _I think I’m in love with you._

How had he managed to mess up so much in such a small span of time?

Yanjun leaned his head back against the wall behind him, closing his eyes. He wished for constellations across the back of his eyelids but found nothing, like the sky with no stars that he hated so much.

Yanjun didn’t know how long the silence was, though that hardly mattered. A silence of two seconds, of two hours, of two days, was a silence nonetheless. Regardless of the time it withstood, it stood with a suffocating gravity that made him lose track of everything. 

He spent the first while evaluating his actions - leaving Zhangjing, thinking about his feelings, punching Nongnong - staring at his hand while it curled in and out of a fist. His knuckles were tinged with a red that made him recoil at the thought of the colors that must have blossomed onto Linong’s jaw.

He spent the next while evaluating his thoughts, glancing at the other boy in the room and immediately averting his gaze in regret and guilt, feeling those same seven words crawl up his throat. He wondered where they came from and why they were settled so neatly into his insides, as if his body was a mansion so large he wasn’t aware of uninvited guests that may have made themselves comfortable for who knows how long without notice. What confused him most was that he was somehow aware that these guests, though unexpected, seemed secure, as if they had no intention of leaving and he had no intention of asking them to. 

He spent the while after that evaluating his options, having given up on trying to explain to himself a love? that had no explanation. How was he supposed to account for all of the stupidity he was entirely responsible for in the last week? A ‘Hey, I was insecure and jealous and am a really self-destructive person’ or ‘I’ve read a lot of books but I still don’t have the words to describe my feelings for you’ or ‘I’m just really, really afraid’ did not suffice. He wracked his brain for anything to say but could only find unintelligible almost-confessions of love that seemed characteristically inappropriate.

But it turned out he didn’t have to.

“Truth or dare?”

Yanjun successfully resisted his mouth’s urge to open in shock, but his jaw may as well have dislocated and dropped uselessly to the floor. He opted to stare at Zhangjing instead. “What?”

Zhangjing sighed with a breath that was frustrated and sad at the same time. Yanjun secretly wished on all the stars he had read about that he would never hear him sound like that again. “Truth or dare?”

“I-uh. Um. Truth?” Yanjun ruffled his hair, peeking up through his bangs to see Zhangjing staring blankly back at him.

“Why did you storm out of the cafeteria that night?” 

“Oh-h, uh,” Yanjun stammered, caught off guard by a question that seemed so trivial in the face of the events that had succeeded it. His nerves were dancing underneath his skin but his heart still warmed at the idea that Zhangjing could be so caring despite everything he had done. “I had a lot on my mind and I needed to think.”

“Was it because of Nongnong?” Zhangjing responding so immediately he must have expected his answer, looking at him with a seriousness that made Yanjun squirm. He straightened up and bit back a smile when he saw Zhangjing’s eyebrows raise in question when he stood up.

“Now, now, now,” Yanjun tutted, walking over to Zhangjing’s side of the room. “That’s not how the game works.” He plopped down beside Zhangjing, head leaned back casually against the wall. He didn’t know what had compelled him to close the distance so nonchalantly once the initial silence had been broken but his heart, warm and happy behind his ribs, made him feel like everything was at least a little bit okay. “Truth or dare?”

Yanjun felt Zhangjing’s gaze on the right side of his face. Half a minute passed before he finally conceded with a sigh. “Truth.”

He turned his head to look seriously at Zhangjing. “When was the last time you ate?” Zhangjing bit his lip, breaking the eye contact, and Yanjun felt his hand curl up into a fist, shaking with anger at himself.

“I had an apple this morning?” he offered.

“God,” Yanjun groaned, resting his elbow on his knee and placing his chin on top of his fist, his teeth clenched.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Zhangjing said quickly. 

“You don’t _get_ it, Zhangjing!” Yanjun exploded, snapping his head to the side to stare at him. He suddenly felt all the words he couldn’t find earlier, overshadowed by the confusion of his feelings, make their way to settle into his mouth; all of the anger, guilt, regret was scorching as it sat on his tongue. “How can you apologize to me when it’s all my fault? All of it. You shouldn’t have to take any sort of responsibility or even let it affect you like that. Why are _you_ the one who got hurt so much from _my_ stupidity?”

Zhangjing’s eyes furrowed in confusion. And, then, anger. “Are you fucking stupid? Why can’t I? Not everything is just solely about you, you know?” he shouted, standing up. Zhangjing slowly sucked in a breath and suddenly quieted, murmuring, “Never mind. I can’t deal with you.”

“Door’s locked,” Yanjun muttered bitterly as Zhangjing took a step towards the door. Yanjun followed in standing up, roughly grabbing Zhangjing’s elbow and turning him around. “And too bad. You’re going to have to deal with me.”

Zhangjing glared at him. “I have no intention of doing that when you’re being such a jerk.” Yanjun raised an eyebrow and brought his face closer.

“Then why are you here with me instead of with Linong?” Yanjun asked lowly. He watched with a little bit of satisfaction and a little bit more fascination as Zhangjing reddened - either by embarrassment or frustration, he didn’t know. They stared at each other for a moment longer before Zhangjing attempted to move away again and Yanjun stopped him with a tighter grip. “Stop trying to just run away and _talk to me.”_

“Why not?” Zhangjing shot back. “Didn’t you _just run away_ that night we were outside?”

“Oh. I-” Yanjun paused, dropping his hand from Zhangjing’s elbow. He sighed, running a hand through his hair. Zhangjing was right and he knew it, but he couldn’t waste the opportunity to talk to the person he had simultaneously been looking for and avoiding the past several days. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. Look, I know I was - and still am - stupid but please, can you talk to me?”

Zhangjing crossed his arms and stared back at him with his chin tilted up, taking on the stance he usually reserved for when he played the vocal teacher during practice. Yanjun sincerely wished he could tug at the ends of his straightened mouth into the bunny smile he hadn’t seen in so long. “Truth or dare?” he finally asked. Yanjun breathed a sigh of relief.

“Truth,” he answered, almost a little too earnestly. He coughed to hide a nervous laugh. “I mean truth,” he repeated calmly. What looked like a suppressed smile flickered on Zhangjing’s face and Yanjun couldn’t help but grin at him.

“What do you have against Nongnong?” Zhangjing asked, referencing the question Yanjun had ignored earlier.

“I don’t have anything _against_ him,” Yanjun started. He bit his lip sheepishly when Zhangjing knowingly raised an eyebrow at him. “Okay, look. I know we’re friends and all but it just occurred to me recently that I’m not good for you.” Zhangjing’s eyes widened and his mouth parted to interject, but Yanjun stopped him. “Just hear me out. Like, you’re a bubbly and happy and sociable person, and that’s why it makes sense that you became friends so easily with Linong, along with literally everyone else here. And it just made me realize that I’m over here, all furrowed eyebrows and not wanting to talk much to people or whatever, and we just probably aren’t,” Yanjun let out a sigh, “compatible as friends.” 

Zhangjing looked like he was about to say something but stopped himself, lips opening and closing softly. Yanjun bit the inside of his cheek as he watched them move, overcome with a sudden urge to... kiss him? The suddenness of the fleeting thought shocked him. It was one that he had never had before, but the primary admission of his true feelings to himself made him feel like he was seeing Zhangjing for the first time all over again. He looked at him now and somehow saw more than from all of the previous times he had stared at him combined. His brown hair, tousled from running his hands through it in frustration; his cheeks, slightly flushed from yelling; his bottom lip which, slightly pursed, disappeared behind white teeth as Zhangjing bit it in contemplation. _Oh no,_ he thought. _I’m screwed._

“So,” Zhangjing said slowly, “you just decided to be an ass because you were insecure?” The words stung Yanjun’s pride but he nodded anyway, partially because he knew they were true and partially because now that he had started looking at Zhangjing’s lips, he couldn’t quite find the will to look away.

“Yeah,” he muttered absentmindedly, “pretty much.” Yanjun was brought out of his daze by a shove to his arm. He looked up to meet Zhangjing’s eyes. “What?”

“You don’t get to decide that, stupid!” Zhangjing exclaimed, hitting him again. “A friendship is two-sided and you can’t just choose that for yourself!” Another hit. “Incompatibile, my foot,” he muttered. “You’re right, I can’t be friends with someone this temperamental. Stupid, stupid, stupid.” Zhangjing hit him several more times until Yanjun grabbed both of his wrists to stop him.

“I get it. I get it, I’m stupid. I’m sorry,” he said, smiling in apology. “Please just hug me and forgive me? I’ve been living in sorrow without my other half,” he said (only half) jokingly and pouted at Zhangjing. At the gesture, Zhangjing moved his hand again, as if making an attempt to slap Yanjun, before they fell into laughter.

“Yanjun asking for a hug? I must be dreaming,” Zhangjing said affectionately, opening his arms up. Yanjun grinned, letting go of his wrists and taking him into his arms.

His “You dream about hugging me, then?” was followed by a slap to his back and a giggle he had missed so dearly it terrified him.

They were lighthearted as they held each other but Yanjun knew there was still a question, a quiet bystander, separating them. Zhangjing had never asked why Yanjun had left him that night, under a sky void of stars, and Yanjun wasn’t going to ask why he hadn’t. What mattered most to him then was that Zhangjing’s head tucked in perfectly underneath Yanjun’s chin and he could finally feel so close to the boy he was afraid to be away from, the boy he needed, the boy he _loved._

By the time they finally separated, Yanjun had lost track of how long they had held onto each other, disoriented by the smell of lavender he discovered in the crook between his shoulder and neck. He sent Zhangjing a smile that only widened when Zhangjing responded with his bunny smile. 

“By the way, you need to go talk to Nongnong,” Zhangjing said seriously.

“Oh, shit. I completely forgot about that. I’m so sorry. I’ve just been so worried about you eating or not lately, so I just lost it when I heard him joke about you needing to stop eating.” Yanjun stopped to look at Zhangjing sternly. “Which you don’t.”

Zhangjing smiled, flicking Yanjun in the forehead. “Thanks, loser. Just go talk to him and please be friendly. He’s a nice guy.” Yanjun nodded, swatting away Zhangjing’s hand. He couldn’t help the smile that refused to leave his face. An unbearable weight felt like it had finally been lifted from him. Being able to joke with Zhangjing, to smile at him and touch him like this, filled him with so much affection he feared for a second he was being too obvious.

“Good idea, wise one. We’re on the same team, so I’m sure everyone will appreciate that.” Zhangjing’s face fell, his eyes widening.

“Oh no, speaking of teams. Ziyi’s pitch is still _awful._ He can’t waste time helping Nongnong! I need to go get him so he can practice!” he cried, quickly walking to the door.

“But, the do-” Yanjun’s declaration fell short as Zhangjing easily turned the knob, the door innocently opening as if it hadn’t refused to budge earlier. Zhangjing blinked in surprise at the handle in his hand, before shrugging at Yanjun and disappearing into the hallway with a “See you at breakfast!” that made Yanjun feel so giddy he felt the need to scold himself for acting like a little schoolgirl.

He exited the room, only to find a smug Dinghao and Chaoze, unnoticed by Zhangjing in his rush to leave, waiting for him. Yanjun stopped, his mouth opening in realization. He shook his head in disbelief.

“No. You guys did _not,_ ” he stated adamantly. Dinghao’s smile grew as he raised his hand, a set of keys twirling around on his finger. Yanjun’s mouth dropped even more. “What the hell? Why?”

“Why not?” Chaoze responded, throwing an arm around Yanjun’s shoulder. “It worked the first time.”


	8. Chapter 8

“I assume you’re expecting me,” Yanjun said, peeking into the room before walking in and shutting the door quietly behind him.

“Yeah, Zhangjing told me when he stopped by to drag Ziyi out of here,” came the reply. Yanjun stood at the door awkwardly, hands clasped in front of him. He smiled apologetically as he made eye contact with Linong, who was sitting at the desk and holding an ice pack to the left side of his face.

“Yeah, he was worried about the performance. I guess all Ziyi’s voice is good for is saying BOOGIE all the time,” he joked. Linong let out a small laugh but flinched at the movement, pressing the ice a little closer to his jaw.

“I heard him yesterday. He’s honestly not that bad, but you know how high Zhangjing’s expectations can be.” Linong smiled at Yanjun with a smile he didn’t deserve. Yanjun felt his heart constrict with guilt. He seemed to have a running streak for hurting people that were much, much better than him.

“I’m sorry.” The suddenness of the apology shocked even Yanjun. He had never been one to lay down his pride so quickly, but all of his doubt - and, of course, his promise to Zhangjing - had accumulated to a point of no return.

Linong stared at him for a moment, a mixture of emotions in his eyes, and finally sighed, setting aside the ice pack on the table. Yanjun cringed at the red and purple that was already evidently bruising his skin.

“Have a seat.” He sat down on the lower bunk bed obediently. “Can you just explain what happened?” Yanjun felt an abundance of thoughts rise up. He had so much and so little to say at the same time, unsure about just how much he should disclose to a boy he barely knew and had offhandedly punched not too long ago. For some reason, though, there was only one admission that came to mind.

“I-uh.” He took a deep breath. “Okay, you were right. I was jealous.” Linong nodded understandingly.

“I got that much. You haven’t been the most welcoming person.” Yanjun grinned sheepishly and opened his mouth to apologize again. “No, it’s okay. I should have known not to intrude so much.” He paused, as if contemplating whether or not to continue. “You have feelings for him, right?”

Yanjun choked, pounding his chest with a fist to regain a clean air flow into his lungs. “What did you just say?” Linong blinked innocently, as if he hadn’t just exposed Yanjun for something he had been having a crisis over for an entire week.

“You have feelings for Zhangjing, don’t you?”

“How did you know?” Linong suddenly grinned with a smile that stretched across his face and brought wrinkles that caused his eyes to disappear. The left side of his face grimaced slightly from the pain but he maintained the smile anyway.

“Yes! I knew it!” he exclaimed excitedly, clapping his hands. He quieted and leaned in, like a curious little boy on the playground. Yanjun stared at him and felt a pang to his heart with how much Linong reminded him of himself from an earlier time. He was a 17-year-old in another country, chasing his dreams blindly and hoping that optimism could bring him at least a small amount of distance in the race track that was the entertainment industry. He hoped suddenly that sunshine was as forgiving as it was mercilessly bright. “I’m usually a pretty oblivious person, but you’d have to be blind not to see that. You’re just always around him or looking at him when you’re not right next to him. I know you two are best friends or whatever but you managed to surpass even those limits,” he explained, slightly tripping over his words with his enthusiasm.

“I honestly figured that out today.” Yanjun chuckled shyly. “Specifically, right before I punched you. Or... right when I punched you, I think.” Linong’s responding smile brought him so much affection he scolded himself for ever letting his own blind jealousy hinder their friendship.

“Well, I’m glad I could help, then,” he said with a satisfied nod and then added, “Even though it did kind of hurt.”

“Seriously, I’m so sorry. All of this has been my fault and I hope you can forgive me.” Yanjun fiddled with his hands nervously, hoping he could build a strong foundation from all of his previous mistakes.

“It’s fine! Maybe I’ll look more manly now,” Linong said lightheartedly. “Just know that there’s no need to get jealous again. He’s more like my mother than anything,” he whispered, and Yanjun laughed. Linong stuck out a hand as if to high-five Yanjun, who went to receive it with his own and was surprised when Linong changed his flat palm into a fist at the last second. “Turkey!”

There was a blank pause as they stared at each other before Yanjun fell into a fit of laughter at the pure childishness of the action. Linong followed with his own giggles, re-attaching the ice pack to his face when he started feeling the effects of neglecting his bruise for too long.

“You know,” Yanjun said, wiping a happy tear from the corner of his eye, “you’re a little different from when I first saw you on this show.”

“Hm?” Linong hummed, spinning around in his chair to spoon some ramen out of a large bowl sitting on the desk. Yanjun bit his lip.

“It’s just that... I don’t know.” Yanjun reclined on the bed, crossing his arms underneath his head. “You seem a lot more serious, especially during practice. I swear I don’t see you smile as much with the cameras around.” 

Yanjun didn’t expect Linong to look so sad as he turned back around, cheeks still filled with noodles. He didn’t expect Linong to reveal the hate he had been receiving since the beginning of the show from people who accused his bubbly personality of being fake. His heart throbbed with an understanding sympathy as he reassured him, the back of his mind reminiscing about a younger, more naive Lin Yanjun scrolling through Weibo comments and all too affected by comments just as accusing.

When they walked into practice room later that night, they did it together, sharing friendly jokes and smiles. Their teammates asked about Linong’s bruise and Yanjun opened his mouth to declare his stupidity but was stopped by Linong, who quickly interjected and claimed he’d tripped and face-planted onto one of their prop chairs. The trainees were extremely confused at first but disregarded the incident, aware of Linong’s clumsiness but unaware of the mischievous grin he sent Yanjun after telling the lie. The confusion was soon overshadowed as everyone praised Linong for his stage presence, discussing how his bright smile was perfect for the concept of the song; and he, in turn, just smiled wider and returned Yanjun’s raised palm with a fist, both of them yelling “Turkey!” in unison.

\---

Linong quickly sat down next to Yanjun, looking around sporadically before leaning in. “So, when are you going to tell him?” Yanjun choked on his rice at the sudden intrusion, swatting his free hand at the hyper teenager.

“Tell who what?” he asked, mouth still full. Linong turned his head in several directions to look around again and Yanjun stopped his motions with a hand on top of his head, concerned he would snap his neck from overactivity.

Linong brought his head closer and whispered, “When are you going to tell Zhangjing you-” Yanjun stopped him with a hand slapped across his mouth, sending a fake grin to Chaoze, who had been squinting at them in skepticism ever since Linong had arrived.

“Yeah, Yanjun,” Chaoze started, voice smug and dripping with sarcasm. “When are you going to tell Zhangjing you...” He trailed off, raising his eyebrows. Yanjun grimaced, slowly lifting his hand from Linong’s mouth.

“I don’t know how to,” he admitted meekly. Chaoze’s mouth dropped at the fact that Yanjun hadn’t tried to deny anything for once.

“What the. When the... Huh?” he stammered, looking between Yanjun and Linong. He spluttered, pointing an accusing finger at the latter. “How come he found out before I did? After everything I’ve done for you!” Linong grinned innocently, shrugging.

“Lay off. The boy let me punch him to figure out my feelings,” Yanjun grumbled, spooning some more rice into his mouth.

“Well, I didn’t _let-”_ Chaoze tutted, shushing Linong with a finger from across the table. He was about to speak up before Dinghao and Zhangjing appeared out of nowhere, holding plates of food in their hands. The three boys, pretending to be normal despite Chaoze’s finger still glued to Linong’s mouth, immediately sent smiles to the approaching trainees. Dinghao narrowed his eyes in a skepticism Zhangjing was too enamored by his food to have as he sat beside Chaoze, who puffed out his cheeks and crossed his fingers at the boy. Dinghao stared for a second and then clapped a hand across his own mouth in an attempt to contain a scream, eyes wide as they danced excitedly between Yanjun and Zhangjing. Yanjun groaned. He would never understand their silent language of gestures and faces. They were in the middle of a competition. When had they even had time to make it up? He flipped them off and discreetly checked to see if Zhangjing had noticed the suspicious activity.

He hadn’t, too busy with downing his own bottle of banana milk before trying to grab Yanjun’s. Their eyes met as Zhangjing checked to see if Yanjun was watching him steal his bottle (he always was, but Zhangjing didn’t know that) and smiled in embarrassment when he noticed that he was. Yanjun laughed under his breath at Zhangjing, whose eyes were like a deer in headlights, and gave a small nod of acquiescence. The older one grinned, quickly grabbing the bottle.

“Lovebirds,” Dinghao coughed out conspicuously. Zhangjing glanced down with a red warming up his cheeks and Yanjun shifted to sit on his hands so he wouldn’t act against his better judgement and poke them like he wanted to. He threateningly glared at Dinghao, who responded by sticking out a tongue, wiggling his eyebrows.

Zhangjing finally looked up, having successfully ripped off the plastic on Yanjun’s bottle, and began waving ecstatically. Yanjun followed his gaze to see Bi Wenjun, who started to make his way over to their table. _What?_ Yanjun thought in confusion, wondering why he wasn’t sitting at the Yuehua table. 

“Wow, was I just prioritized by _the_ Bi Wenjun?” Zhangjing joked as Wenjun set his plate beside him. “Aren’t you Yuehua boys exclusive?”

Wenjun chuckled. “Justin and Chengcheng are in a fight again and I’d seriously rather not see Zhengting mother them. Whoever put them all in a team together wanted to see the world end.” Yanjun watched Zhangjing giggle - a little _too_ enthusiastically, considering the joke wasn’t _that_ funny in Yanjun’s eyes - and continue the conversation with the giant beside him. He sent a _What the fuck?_ face to Linong, whose mirroring face was just as lost. 

“Not again,” Yanjun groaned grumpily, stabbing his plate with a chopstick. “I can never win.” 

Linong stood up suddenly and pulled up Yanjun by the arm. Zhangjing broke conversation to look at them questioningly, to which Linong responded with a “I need extra practice on a move from earlier!” - ignoring Chaoze’s snorted “Why Yanjun, though? He’s probably worse off than you are” and dragging Yanjun out of the cafeteria. 

“What’s up?” Yanjun sulked against the wall they had stopped by. Linong clicked his tongue in disappointment, punching his shoulder lightly.

“What happened to the tough-guy-Yanjun who punched me earlier? This is just sad.”

“This is helpless. I am helpless. Zhangjing is just too good,” Yanjun mumbled. He had realized his feelings, but that was accompanied by the realization of how impossible it would be for him to confess. After Linong, it was Wenjun. Even if he got past Wenjun, there were tens of other trainees in the building Zhangjing had befriended in the short amount of time since they’d arrived. It seemed unlikely that he would ever overcome the looming insecurity that the two of them just weren’t compatible.

“Okay, that’s gross. Don’t get mushy with me.” Linong’s face contorted in disgust, wrinkling the bandage covering his bruise (turns out he had been wrong about looking manlier with the damage Yanjun had inflicted; he somehow managed to look even more childish). “We just need to set up the perfect situation.”

“Howww?” Yanjun whined in defeat. He felt like a child, but he couldn’t help it. Ever since he was young, he had been the one rejecting people left and right, always one to seclude himself from relationships or feelings in general. Now that the tables were turned, he really wasn’t accustomed to being afraid that he was going to be rejected, by his best friend of all people. What were the chances that Zhangjing felt the same way? “Maybe I should hold off on it? I don’t want to possibly mess up our friendship.” 

“No!” Yanjun felt a punch to his shoulder and looked up to meet eyes with Linong. “Stop underestimating your chances. They’re higher than you think.”

Yanjun narrowed his eyes at the boy in front of him. “Do you happen to know anything?” What was the possibility that they had talked about Yanjun during those days they hadn’t talked?

“Nope,” Linong answered casually, responding with his trademark innocently blinking eyes. Yanjun sighed and decided to give it up. He didn’t want to get his hopes up for nothing anyway. Linong would tell Yanjun what he would want to hear and an optimistic Yanjun would be faced with an even higher level of disappointment when Zhangjing’s affection turned out to be completely platonic. He disregarded all of the times Zhangjing had smiled at him, blushed because of him, lightly hit him because of one of his lame jokes; if he’d stayed long enough in the cafeteria, he probably would have been able to witness all of those, but with “ _the_ Bi Wenjun” as his replacement. The thoughts, weighed down by his own pessimism, sat bitterly in his stomach.

Yanjun blew out a breath through closed lips, unable to help his lack of enthusiasm. He had felt emotionally spent since realizing his feelings. The exhilaration of the truth was matched and possibly overridden by the possibility of disappointment. “Whatever.” 

“Aiyo,” Linong said, grabbing Yanjun’s arm to pull him up into an upright position. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself and help me plan.” 

“What’s with all the mischief? Did I punch you that hard?” Linong grinned and blinked his eyes in what was probably supposed to be a wink but without enough coordination. Yanjun couldn’t help but smile. _At least one good thing has come out of all of this,_ he thought.

“You forget that I’m young, old man.” Linong’s tone changed to the curious elementary schooler he always managed to sound like. “I think you should make him jealous.”

“Jealous?” Yanjun snorted. “This is Zhangjing we’re talking about, not me.”

“Who knows? He might even be worse than you. You’ve just never given him the opportunity to be because you talk to” - Linong slowly counted on his fingers before nodding - “three other people besides him, two before you started talking to me.” 

Yanjun grunted, slapping away the three fingers glaring at him from Linong’s hand. “I get it, you don’t have to expose me that badly. I just don’t think he’s the kind of guy to be possessive or whatever. Like, do you see how much of a social butterfly he is?”

“I don’t know, man.” Linong hummed. “Why don’t you just give it a try? It’s not like it’ll hurt anything, except for that fact that you have to expand your horizons and talk to _one_ more person.” Yanjun pushed away Linong’s hand, now holding up four fingers, and flicked him on the forehead.

“Who knew you could be so rude? You’re grounded.”

“See? You two are meant for each other! Wow, I can’t believe my single mother is about to get me a dad.” Yanjun shook his head adamantly.

“We’re not about to do this. I don’t want you turning into Justin.” Yanjun paused, contemplating Linong’s idea. He couldn’t help feel doubt. Suggesting Zhangjing would become jealous from Yanjun suddenly talking to another person would assume that he was protective over him in that way... but did that make sense? Their friendship was usually very straightforward in dynamics, but Yanjun was beginning to wonder if there were things he’d missed over the last months. Despite himself, he began to get nervous and a little... hopeful? Was there a chance, albeit infinitely small, that Zhangjing would get jealous? He sighed. “Say I agree to the idea.” Linong perked up and Yanjun shushed him quickly, pushing back his head when he started to lean in. “ _If_ I agree, who would I even make him jealous with? It’s illegal for me to even talk to you like that and I may be gay, but not gay enough to flirt with Dinghao or Chaoze.”

Yanjun ended up agreeing, to Linong’s (unnecessarily) extreme happiness. They ended up choosing Jeffrey - apparently word had gotten around that Yanjun had touched his pecs that _one_ time - and it helped that they were roommates. It felt weird to invite Jeffrey over to their cafeteria table, to the extreme shock of Chaoze, Dinghao, and Zhangjing - the only ones who weren’t confused were Linong, who hid a smile behind his water bottle, and Wenjun, who seemed to always respond to everything with his nonchalant, unfazed resting face. It felt even weirder to direct all of his attention to maintaining conversation with Jeffrey (at least he was funny, even though he talked about eggs too much for Yanjun’s taste) instead of glaring at Zhangjing maintaining conversation with Wenjun.

Linong had estimated it to take at least three days for Zhangjing to feel threatened to the point of confrontation (to the great dismay of Yanjun, who favored instant gratification and hated the idea of fake-ignoring Zhangjing for several days after being ignored by him for a week).

Zhangjing turned out to exceed everyone’s expectations. It took him all of 36 hours to stomp out of the cafeteria, a hand dragging Yanjun behind him.


	9. Chapter 9

“This is the second time in less than three days that you’ve dragged me off to a secluded room in a temper. Can’t get enough of me?” Yanjun’s casual flirting was incontestably a front. Behind his ribcage, his heart raced in anxiety and excitement. _Had the plan really worked?_

“Shut up, Yanjun,” Zhangjing snapped. Yanjun’s eyes furrowed at the boy, just several inches smaller, in front of him. He was panting after walking so quickly and having to drag Yanjun’s weight along with his own - and drag he did, for Yanjun’s legs turned to nervous jelly as soon as Zhangjing had grabbed for his hand. He resisted the urge to close his mouth, parted as it drew out a heavy breath, with his own.

Yanjun sobered up a bit, mentally swatting away inappropriate thoughts. “Wait, you should go back and eat your food. You didn’t finish your meal, did you?” The question was caring, but he noted with confusion that it somehow made Zhangjing even angrier. The boy in question blew out another breath and turned away from Yanjun, rubbing his temple. Yanjun hesitated. Did he read the situation wrong? Was this possibly about something else? “Wait, what’s wrong?”

He stepped forward to lightly nudge at Zhangjing’s shoulder, whose owner turned around immediately and took a step back. Yanjun noted the space separating them with concern. “Yeah, I’m good,” Zhangjing said slowly, composing himself and nodding. “Sorry. We should head back to the cafeteria.”

“Wait” - Yanjun blinked - “what?”

Zhangjing lightly laughed at himself. “I really don’t know what I was thinking. It’s nothing, it’s nothing.” He started to make his way to the door but Yanjun stepped forward to close the distance Zhangjing had imposed between them, grabbing his hand and turning him around.

“No, tell me what’s wrong.” Yanjun mentally scolded himself. Something could have been affecting Zhangjing this whole time and he might have been too focused on making him jealous with Jeffrey to even notice. “You’ve been acting weird for the past two days.” It was true. Zhangjing had been a lot quieter, fulfilling the silence in his mouth with food instead of words. Yanjun had found that he’d only been eating half of what he’d spooned onto his plate while in line, as Zhangjing had allocated the rest of it into his mouth.

The composure Zhangjing had gained suddenly dissipated, his brown eyes narrowing. _“I’ve_ been acting weird for the past two days?” He took a step back and there was that damn distance again. “Are you _kidding_ me? You’re the one who’s been” - Zhangjing flailed his arms, at a loss for words - “oh, I don’t know, acting _weird_ or whatever.”

Yanjun reeled back at the accusation, pointing at himself. _“Me?”_ Zhangjing stepped forward, sticking an angry finger into Yanjun’s chest (he hoped secretly that Zhangjing didn’t feel his heart threatening to burst out of him through the centimeter of sweater that separated finger from skin).

“Yes, _you!_ What is up with you and Jeffrey all of a sudden?” Yanjun bit down on his lip, hard, to hold back the smile itching to surface. This time, he stepped back to increase the space between them, afraid his fast pulse would reveal what he was too afraid to say in words. Zhangjing glanced down at Yanjun’s feet moving away and then back up at Yanjun’s face; Yanjun instantly regretted the action. Was that hurt in Zhangjing’s eyes?

“What do you mean what’s up with me and Jeffrey?” It physically wounded Yanjun to act so aloof, knowing he was probably messing with Zhangjing’s feelings. Zhangjing proved this, turning around and running a hand through his hair in frustration.

“Like, when did you get so close? You started inviting him to our table - which is okay, don’t get me wrong. I was just surprised because it happened out of nowhere. But, it’s just-” He paused. There was an exasperated sigh before he turned around and glared at Yanjun. “Whatever happened to, you know, trusting only a small group of people?”

Yanjun’s mouth pursed. “Well, yeah, but what’s wrong with Jeffrey? I thought you wanted me to socialize a little more? You had no trouble with my friendship with Nongnong.” He wondered what this meant - the idea that Zhangjing might be displaying signs of jealousy just because he’d started talking to another person. 

Zhangjing blew out another breath; it was difficult to tell if his constrained anger was directed at himself or Yanjun at this point. “Yeah, I know. You’re right.” A pause. “Is there-” He stopped. Yanjun looked at Zhangjing look at his feet. “Is there something going on between you two?” 

Yanjun felt an overwhelming wave of affection wash over him; it felt like his heart had melted and dripped out of its place, lining his individual ribs and covering his insides in pure, unadulterated mush. He’d never thought he would see the day Zhangjing would stand so vulnerably shy in front of him, unable to meet his eyes as he asked such an innocent question. He stepped closer to him, aching to eliminate whatever kept them apart, and ruffled Zhangjing’s hair lightly. Zhangjing looked up, meeting Yanjun’s soft gaze questioningly.

“Of course not, loser.” He poked Zhangjing’s forehead with two fingers playfully before dropping his hand to his side, afraid of what would happen if his hand was touching the other’s face for too long. Yanjun felt all of his rough exterior follow his heart in melting away, and he grinned lopsidedly. “I don’t like him like that.”

Zhangjing stared up at him for a moment. Yanjun dared to think that, quite possibly, he was mirroring the affection he held in his own eyes. There was a moment of self-reflection as Yanjun realized he was entirely too selfish - there was no way he could stand to be just friends with Zhangjing. He needed Zhangjing, yes, but he needed Zhangjing to the fullest extent. He needed all of him.

If Zhangjing had let him, Yanjun just might have kissed him right then. But Zhangjing didn’t, being the first one to move against the silence.

Yanjun didn’t know what to expect, but he definitely didn’t expect violence. He stumbled back a step as Zhangjing shoved his shoulders.

“You don’t _like him like that?”_ Zhangjing exclaimed in aggravation. His voice rose. “Yanjun, you let him feed you an egg just now! _An egg!”_

Yanjun flinched. So, _that_ was what had instigated Zhangjing’s confrontation. “Yeah, that was a bit much.” 

“You don’t say?” Zhangjing responded bitterly with a glare. Yanjun stopped, a desire flitting across the back of his brain to ask a question he knew would change everything.

“Are you... Are you jealous?” he asked quietly, watching carefully for a response. Zhangjing froze, his eyes sliding to the side. There was a bite lip. Yanjun clamped down on the inside of his cheek to keep the smugness from rising to his face. That was all the evidence he needed. He may have been insecure and doubtful and pessimistic and a million of other things that stood to cause his hesitation, but he knew Zhangjing better than anyone else. Most importantly, he knew what a response like that to a question like that meant.

“No! I’m not!” Zhangjing quickly recovered with a shake of his head, tripping over his words in making excuses. “I just find it weird that you and Jeffrey suddenly became so buddy-buddy with each other. I know he’s your roommate, but-” To Yanjun’s increasing satisfaction, Zhangjing began to stammer. “I-I don’t know, I just don’t think you two are... uh, well-matched, I guess is the word. Like, he’s a nice guy and he’s got a great smile and he’s a good singer and, shit, he’s really rich and all, but...” Zhangjing bit his lip again. He looked up to see Yanjun grinning widely at him. “This isn’t funny! Why are you smiling? I’m serious! I was seriously afraid something was going on between you two!”

“And, why would you be afraid?” Yanjun murmured softly, taking a step forward. Zhangjing was too nervous to notice the close proximity, continuing to trip over his words as he stared at Yanjun with big eyes.

“Well, it’s just that I thought I’d lost you a couple of days ago. And, I really missed you an-and I know we didn’t talk about it but I pretty much lost hope after that one night and, to be honest, I really want to know but I was too afraid to ask because I was just happy that I got you back. Well, not got you back, you know, but that we started talking again.” To Yanjun’s alarm, Zhangjing started crying - nervous, hopeless, scared tears running down his cheeks. He continued to ramble, tripping on words with hiccups that surfaced from the back of his throat. “I guess I thought we were good - no, better than good - after that talk a few days ago and then you come out of nowhere with Jeffrey hanging off your arm and feeding you eggs and I just... just was wondering where _I_ went wrong?”

Zhangjing let out a small laugh, almost-sad and almost-happy but entirely a nothing laugh. Yanjun couldn’t take it anymore; the hand he was restraining by his side reached up, cradling the side of Zhangjing’s face. He felt a tingling feeling of satisfaction and something else rise up from his feet and electrify the rest of his body as Zhangjing naturally leaned into his hand. His thumb swiped across Zhangjing’s cheeks gently, trying to catch as many of the tears for himself as Zhangjing continued. “I know I’m being stupid and irrational.” Another laugh. “I even started stealing extra stuff off your plate hoping you would notice” - Yanjun’s heart clenched and he felt his motivations overcome him - “but you just kept talking to Jeffrey and I-”

Yanjun tilted Zhangjing’s chin up suddenly and leaned down, swallowing the rest of his rant as lip met lip. Zhangjing stilled at first - with shock, then confusion - and even tried to lean back to question Yanjun, but Yanjun just pulled him closer by his jaw to reconfirm his intentions. Assured, Zhangjing loosened up and _kissed back_ and Yanjun, despite expecting it, felt an unknown feeling that felt a lot like everything. 

The kiss was slow, as Yanjun hoped to draw out with his lips a picture of his confession he hadn’t dared to say. Zhangjing tasted like tears and Yanjun’s stolen banana milk and Yanjun thought it was beautiful, thought Zhangjing was beautiful. He felt hands slide up his shoulders and into his hair and breathed relief, awe, and euphoria onto Zhangjing’s top lip, wrapping his arm around the smaller’s waist and pulling him closer, closer.

When he was out of air, Yanjun leaned back slightly. Their foreheads touched, breaths mingling in the minimal amount of space between them. Zhangjing stared with wide eyes, questions evident but unspoken. There were no words to answer with - Zhangjing had used them all up anyway - so Yanjun answered with small kisses, reconnecting their lips because he really couldn’t get enough of Zhangjing.

He hoped that the kisses spelled out what his heart exploded with every time it beat but just in case, Yanjun leaned back and whispered a small “I love you” before kissing the words into Zhangjing. The reply wasn’t needed but Zhangjing gave it anyway, in small murmurs between hair pulls and lip bites.

\---

“If we got you two together, do you think we can break y’all up? I don’t think I can handle this anymore.” Linong, who wasn’t used to Dinghao’s trademark disgusted face, fell into hysterics at the one he followed his comment with.

“I’d be fine if it wasn’t for all the _staring,”_ Chaoze chimed in after his friend. He looked between the two and flattened his mouth into a line. “Yanjun, aren’t you afraid Zhangjing’s going to cover you in sweet and sour sauce and eat you one of these days?” Dinghao groaned, banging his head onto the cafeteria table loudly and letting out a muffled “Please don’t give them bedroom ideas, please.”

“Ooh, I don’t know about that one, Chaoze,” Linong interjected. “Have you seen Yanjun’s predatory gaze?” Zhangjing’s eyes narrowed as he smacked the boy on the side of the head.

“I don’t want to hear those words come out of your mouth. You’re, like, 12.”

"Amazing! One of them speaks!” Dinghao exclaimed sarcastically, picking his head up from the table. 

“I’m surprised _you_ can speak, squirrel-brain.” Yanjun glared at Dinghao, who had responded with raised arms and a melodramatic “Have the heavens opened up? We’ve been blessed with both of their voices!”

“Ignore him,” Chaoze whispered loudly. “He’s just bitter because he’s single.” Zhangjing and Yanjun made eye contact again and smiled mischievously, an unspoken agreement rising. Zhangjing opened his mouth to make a remark about how he could easily change that, but was interrupted by the arrival of Jeffrey and Wenjun, who’d become regular attendees at their table (or, at least, when Zhengting allowed Wenjun to).

“News flash, Dinghao. Pretty much everyone’s single, except for these two idiots,” Wenjun retorted, setting his plate down beside Zhangjing and hauling his unnecessarily long legs over the bench to sit down.

“Oh, wait. Don’t forget Zhou Yanchen and Ding Zeren,” added Jeffrey, sitting down beside Yanjun. Linong nodded in agreement and Wenjun choked on his milk, spitting it across the table at Dinghao, who angrily wiped at his face and yelled “What the fuck is up with Yuehua boys and spitting liquids at me?”

A gossip circle ensued as Wenjun interrogated Jeffrey and Linong, wondering how they knew that before he did when one of them was his long-time friend from the same company. Dinghao and Chaoze finally shut up to listen intently, ever the gossip queens. Yanjun glanced down at Zhangjing, who was smiling at the others fondly, and leaned in to whisper in his ear.

“I forgot to ask this earlier, but how’s your stomach and heart feeling?” Zhangjing blushed, looking down before turning to look at Yanjun. He lightly shoved the younger boy.

“You don’t have to ask that anymore. The answer’s always going to be weightless.” Yanjun grinned and sent a wink.

“Because of me, babe?” Zhangjing’s smile was lighthearted as he poked Yanjun’s dimple, but there was a seriousness in his eyes, mixed with gratitude, contentment, and love.

“Always.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW WHAT A QUICK UPDATE WHAT THE HECK (truth is, i graduated from high school yesterday and i was extremely bored and i've been inspired lately anyway because of all these fanmeets god bless)
> 
> this is the end of the zhangjun story !! as a little bit of a present, i'm hoping to include a bonus little drabble focusing on dinghao and chaoze as a tenth chapter hehe
> 
> i just want to take this opportunity to thank you all from the bottom of my heart. this is the first fanfic i've ever written, and all of the kudos, comments, and just support in general means a lot. (i also want to apologize for the fact that i can't, for the love of everything that is zhangjun, write kiss scenes and this has been my first attempt at one. please forgive me.)
> 
> anyway, thank you all so, so much. along with the tenth drabble chapter, i have many ideas for future one shots, mainly for zhangjun and yanren, so stick around and anticipate if you've enjoyed! <33


	10. BONUS

It was a little concerning how madly in love Zhangjing was with Yanjun.

They were in a small practice room, empty except for them two and a handful of chairs, one of which Yanjun was standing on top of (albeit apprehensively).

“You’re good, you’re good. Just look at me. There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Zhangjing reassured sincerely. Yanjun nodded, and it made him look so uncharacteristically childish Zhangjing want to soften into a puddle and disappear into the hardwood beneath his feet. He would never get accustomed to the rare times Yanjun would abandon his overly mature and dramatically serious facade and actually act his status as the younger one in the relationship. This time, it was because of his extreme fear of heights, even though the chairs they used for “Firewalking” were barely a foot off the ground.

Yanjun molded into character, feigning confidence as he walked the line of chairs and sang his part. It was the most beautiful thing Zhangjing had ever seen or heard - and that wasn’t just because he was biased. There was something about the concept of the song and the specific lines Yanjun had been given; his vocals had never sounded so amazing.

“Babe, you’re staring.” Yanjun, already at the last chair, grinned impishly as he hopped to the ground. “How’d I sound?”

Yanjun’s ego was too easily inflated. “Awful. They’d be better off with a screeching cat,” Zhangjing deadpanned, but he couldn’t help the grin that overtook his face as Yanjun pouted. “Kidding, you’ve improved a lot.” Zhangjing sighed, bringing the back of his hand to his forehead and clutched his shirt with the other in theatrics. “My maiden heart is pounding. If only you’d serenaded me like this back at the company. We wouldn’t have needed so much meddling from Chaoze, Dinghao, and Nongnong.”

“I hate you.” Yanjun chuckled, lips pulled to the side in a lopsided grin as he leaned down to press his lips quickly against Zhangjing’s. “Speaking of meddlers, we need to get them together.” He recalled his words and instantly gagged. “I mean, Dinghao and Chaoze. Nongnong is literally a child.”

Zhangjing giggled as Yanjun silently picked up his hand and played with the tips of his fingers. He would’ve never imagined the younger one, always so cold and seclusive, would be so prone to skinship - but turned out it was how his possessiveness manifested (and Zhangjing definitely wasn’t complaining; sometimes he secretly gave just a _little_ more attention to Wenjun than usual so Yanjun would demand apology hugs later on).

“So, you finally agree with me, then? That they belong together?”

Yanjun snorted. “More like they deserve each other. Who else is going to tolerate their stupidity except each other? Have you seen their little made-up sign language?” Zhangjing leaned forward in laughter, clutching onto Yanjun’s arm and leaning on his shoulder.

“Yes, I have!” He sobered up, frowning. “I think” - he puffed out his cheeks - “is me. Screw them. Never mind, they don’t deserve our help.” Yanjun threw his head back and laughed, loud and deep. He pinched his cheek.

“Props to them if it is. It’s cute on you.” Zhangjing blushed, but swatted Yanjun away when he brought his head closer.

“Shut up, don’t distract me. We need a plan.” Yanjun winked.

“I think I have one.”

\---

Zhangjing clasped his hands on the table in front of him. “I have some great news to share,” he announced.

“You and Yanjun finally signed the adoptions papers and Nongnong is officially your first child?”

“First?” Yanjun retorted. “I don’t want any more than one.” Zhangjing broke his professional stance, turning to face his boyfriend.

“Wait, you don’t want more than one?” he asked softly, off-track. Chaoze rolled his eyes, waving his hand in front of Zhangjing’s face to redirect his attention.

“Can you _please_ get to the point?” Dinghao gagged beside him, nodding vigorously at the request.

Zhangjing finally turned back to the matter at hand, only consoled when Yanjun whispered “Babe, we got years to talk about this. We’ll have this talk later,” even though he got roasted for it by Jeffrey immediately afterwards and for the next week (it was worth it, he decided, after seeing Zhangjing’s hopeful and affectionate smiled directed at him for it).

“Right,” he coughed, “sorry. My announcement is that I’m finally opening up my doors to give underprivileged peasants vocal lessons, merely out of the pure goodness of my heart!”

“Oh, does that mean you’ll finally help me with that one part of ‘I Will Always Remember?’” Jeffrey asked.

“No,” Zhangjing answered instantly, sending him an annoyed look. He changed expressions so quickly Yanjun choked on a laugh behind his hand, feigning friendliness and eyeing Chaoze and Dinghao with intent. “I want my grand opening to be _special,_ so I will graciously offer first dibs to my dear friends, Chaoze and Dinghao.”

“I sing like a goddess already, keep your offer for yourself,” Dinghao retorted in conjunction with Dinghao’s “Angels don’t accept help.”

“Shut up. You two will be my first customers or I’ll call up Zhixie and tell him you two were the ones that vandalized his Peppa Pig pajamas.” Chaoze and Dinghao immediately clamped their mouths closed.

“Shit, fine,” Chaoze muttered. Zhangjing clapped his hands in satisfaction, as if he hadn’t just risked instant fatality for the two at the prospect of a furious Zhixie.

“Great! Dinghao, meet me in the practice room at six. Chaoze, you can come by a little later since you two are doing different songs.”

\---

It was 6:14 when Zhangjing excused himself to go to the bathroom. He opened the door and came face to face with Yanjun, holding a much smaller (at least, in comparison) Chaoze by the shoulder. 

When Zhangjing was fully in the hallway, Yanjun unceremoniously shoved Chaoze in and closed the door behind him. “That wasn’t very... inconspicuous,” Zhangjing noted casually, staring at the door. In his peripheral vision, he saw Yanjun shrug. “Oh, and what about locking it?”

“There’s honestly no point in subtlety anymore,” he remarked. They made their way to two chairs already set up in the hallway, prepared for a stakeout. “Apparently they’d bribed the keys from Fanfan in exchange for a supply of spicy breadsticks. I stopped by his room earlier to ask and he was literally lying in a pile of them.” He shook his head. “They must have cleaned off the grocery store’s stock for a month. So, no keys. But, I have a feeling they’re not even going to check the door.”

They didn’t. 

“So, you two are just going to stay here all night and wait for them?” Linong asked ten minutes later, after he had passed by the halls and was quickly debriefed on the plan after sending a questioning look. Yanjun waved a dismissive hand.

“Nah, I imagine it won’t take more than a total of two hours.” Zhangjing leaned towards the other two, scoffing.

“Pfft, have you seen their sexual tension? I say an hour.” Linong’s and Yanjun’s mouths dropped in unison.

“Did-did you just say _sexual tension?”_ Yanjun asked.

“Between _Chaoze_ and _Dinghao?”_ Linong added. Zhangjing nodded enthusiastically.

“You two might not have seen much, but I’m forced to share a room with them and it’s off the charts. Dinghao walked into the bathroom while Chaoze was showering one time. I mean, it’s must have happened before back at the Banana building, considering none of the other trainees know anything about personal space, but Dinghao walked out of the bathroom and left the room so quickly. He didn’t even brush his teeth.”

Yanjun whistled through his teeth. “No way. Who would’ve known they’d have it in them?”

“No kidding,” said Linong. “They have more sexual tension than y’all did! You two just had angst.” Zhangjing laughed as Yanjun punched Linong lightly on the arm with a glare.

Linong ended up camping out with the other two, sitting at their feet and claiming none of the others in the "Firewalking" team would get any work done without their leader and the main dancer and that he could “waste an hour, anyway.”

It took a total of 31 minutes.

The end of the plan was signaled by a single sheet of paper, appearing to have been ripped from the diary the staff had allotted to each of them the first day. Yanjun was the first to pick up the paper. He read it, grimaced, and passed it to Linong, who gagged and passed it to Zhangjing, who just stared at it.

_We made out, fools. You can let us out now._

“Yikes,” Zhangjing muttered. Yanjun groaned, slinging an arm around his boyfriend and his unofficial son.

“Let’s just go. They can figure it out themselves. I’m starting to regret this already.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that's it, guys! hard to believe it's actually done :( here's a little more zhangjun acting like newlyweds and the crackhead intro to chaoze and dinghao i promised (even though it's just a drabble and poorly written) !!
> 
> again, i want to thank each and every one of you for sticking around and supporting. if you are in need of some more zhangjun fluff, go check out the oneshot, _three questions he asked (and one he didn't),_ i posted recently! i've also got some yanren hiding up my sleeve, so anticipate hehe
> 
> follow me on twitter so we can become mutuals!! @zzzycjohnson


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